


Milton Heights: Block Party

by IncurableNecromantic



Category: Disney - All Media Types, James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl, Lady and the Tramp (1955), Robin Hood (Disney 1973), The Aristocats (1970)
Genre: Disney AU, Gen, M/M, neighborhood AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-13 18:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncurableNecromantic/pseuds/IncurableNecromantic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Milton Heights is the very seat of propriety...after all, the greater part of propriety is hiding what you're doing.  And it's best done when you have friends to help you.</i>
</p><p>Early summer means something special for the rather elderly neighborhood of Milton Heights: the annual block party.  As many citizens begin gearing up for the event and welcome the arrival of their nieces, nephews, and grandchildren for the summer, a trio of gossipy retirees start planning their improvement projects for the summer--most of which involve their neighbors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Milton Heights takes its name, appropriately enough, from the great Milt Kahl, who worked on such movies as Robin Hood, Winnie the Pooh, the Aristocats, and Lady and the Tramp, among others. Do yourself a favor and look up his work animating Shere Khan in the Jungle Book--truly the work of an artist.

_Milton Heights was very much like any other neighborhood, really._

_About twenty years ago, it had been swallowed into the city proper, making its property values jut sky-high, even as long-time residents grumbled about traffic and noise pollution. It had its idiosyncrasies, of course, but most places did._

_It was a beautiful series of blocks of single family houses and duplexes on one side of the street and combinations of townhouses perched on the slight hill of the other side. The streets were lined with large trees that made the sidewalks writhe from beneath with their deep roots, and in the summer, spring peepers out-sung the faint city noises until the crickets came to take over. It was a close-knit and social community, most of the inhabitants retirees._

_Down the way a bit, the Bonfamille mansion presided over Milton Heights, making the area practically reek of old money. In the newer section of the neighborhood, the elementary school, library, and community center reigned supreme on most aspects of community life._

_With that elderly element in place and the reputation the area had for hospitality, along its very own noble family, one might think that Milton Heights was the very seat and definition of stalwart propriety._

_And one would not be wrong._

\--

“My dear?” Mr. Grasshopper asked, as he held open the cabinets of Mrs. Ladybug’s pantry, looking for tea. “Do I want to know why you have a Horny Goat Weed tea?”

The merry widow popped her head around the doorway of her sun room, giggling. “Why, I must have something to serve the postman when he comes to ‘visit,’ Mr. Grasshopper!”

Mr. Grasshopper snorted good-naturedly, filling the teapot with water and listening to the sound of Ms. Kluck’s laughter from the sun room.

“Ooh, you are too, too bad, Mrs. Ladybug!” their neighbor said, waving a lacy hand-fan at her chest and neck. 

“Nonsense,” Mrs. Ladybug tutted, patting a spot beside her on her loveseat for Mr. Grasshopper. He flicked his coattails out of the way and sat down, crossing one impossibly long leg over the other. “At least I’m not a political dissident, like you!”

“I’ll have you know that if you’re not angry about politics, you aren’t paying attention,” sniffed Ms. Kluck, a twinkle in her eye. “Besides, it gives me something to connect with Marian over.”

“Ah, of course. And how is little Marian?” Mrs. Ladybug asked. “Our James will be over to visit quite soon, and your dear niece is always one of his favorite playmates.”

“She won her tennis tournament last semester,” Ms. Kluck replied, preening a little. “We are very proud of her! And I do believe she has a gentleman friend, if you know what I mean.”

“Ooh, you must be careful, now,” Mrs. Ladybug said in cautionary tones. “The youth today, you know, so quick to run into things...”

“Not like us,” said Mr. Grasshopper in a dry tone, making the ladies giggle. 

A few houses away, the coughing roar of a lawn mower ripped through the early Saturday morning air. Mr. Grasshopper winced and removed his monocle, polishing it as he went to retrieve the steeped tea. 

“Oh, dear Mr. Rabbit is at it again,” Mrs. Ladybug sighed. “Such a lovely garden he has. But it’s much too early in the morning for that kind of ruckus!”

“If you ask me,” said Ms. Kluck in the tones of one who has never before not been happy to be asked her opinion, “he does it for attention.”

“Klucky! You bad girl,” giggled Mrs. Ladybug. “I know just what you mean--that strapping young neighbor of his! Do you think they’re getting along?”

“I scarcely see how they could,” Ms. Kluck murmured. “Different as night and day! Oh, thank you very much, Mr. Grasshopper--ah, this isn’t Buggy’s Horny tea, is it?”

“I shouldn’t like to deplete Mrs. Ladybug’s resources so,” Mr. Grasshopper smirked, as Mrs. Ladybug reached over to playfully swat Ms. Kluck’s arm. “Besides, I am sure we none of us need any encouragement.”

“To say the least! I can only hope that the street festival might bring in a little fresh blood, now that Buggy’s snapped up all the daily visitors!”   
“Oh, I have not, either!” protested Mrs. Ladybug, waving a hand. “I’m just being friendly!”

“Quite friendly,” Mr. Grasshopper pointed out. 

“Almost as friendly as you and that roughneck fellow that trims the hedges,” Mrs. Ladybug smirked, ribbing him in the side. Mr. Grasshopper’s teacup and saucer clattered. 

“Ooh, the one with the cigar?” Ms. Kluck asked delightedly. “Mr. G, you dirty old fox.”

Mr. Grasshopper sipped his tea with a gesture of immense dignity. “We have many differences of opinion that make for compelling conversation,” he said stiffly. “Nothing more, I assure you ladies.”

“Sounds like a cry for help, Klucky,” Mrs. Ladybug tittered. 

“Granted, almost everything does,” Ms. Kluck replied. “But I agree with you here! Don’t you worry, Mr. Grasshopper--we’ll help you in your troubles.”

Mr. Grasshopper sighed indulgently as the ladies snickered. 

\--

Adelaide Bonfamille did not consider that being an old woman was at all a bad thing, really. Why, the things one got away with when would was in one’s later years--it boggled the mind! She certainly never could’ve done half the things she did now when she was a young girl.

Frou-Frou, her secretary and driver, was still laughing. “Oh, Madame, you are an absolute menace!” she said admiringly, as she opened the car door and helped Adelaide out. 

Adelaide looked at the warning ticket they’d earned for doing seventy in a forty-five mile per hour zone and crumpled it. “Opera teaches you many things, my dear,” she said, “not the least of which is how to fake a seizure.”

“You’re awful, Madame,” Frou-Frou said, shaking her head as she opened the door for her lady. “I don’t think that police officer had the least idea what to do when you started shaking.”

Adelaide clucked her tongue and tossed the crushed warning into a wastebasket. “You’re quite right...I ought to donate a little more money to the municipal police force, oughtn’t I? Get them in a position where they can help little old ladies like me instead of standing there looking silly.” She checked her hair in the mirror and smiled. “Do phone up Georges for just that, won’t you, Frou-Frou?”

“Yes, Madame,” Frou-Frou said, bobbing a little curtsey. “I’ll send your grandchildren up when you are in your parlor.”

Adelaide smiled and ascended the steps. Nothing bad about being old, at all.

\--

“Oh, Lady,” sighed Marian, as the two girls waited for the subway. A pair of suitcases accompanied each young woman, packed with all the essentials necessary for a stay with their uncles and aunts. “I’m completely certain he’s forgotten all about me by now. It’s been years now...who knows what he’s doing!”

Lady fidgeted with her golden locket thoughtfully. “I am decidedly of the opinion that you are unforgettable, Marian, and if he thinks you so, he’s not at all good enough for you. I do imagine we’ll run into him while we’re staying in the neighborhood, don’t you?”

“I hope so,” Marian murmured. 

Lady nudged her in the side. “Buck up! If we don’t, you can always spend the day with Uncle Jock and Uncle Trusty and me! Uncle Trusty has promised to teach me how to shoot this year, and I’ll need help hiding that from Uncle Jock.”

Marian giggled. “Oh, Lady, you’re wicked! Do you think Aunt Kluck will take us to another political demonstration this year?”   
“And teach us how to endure pepper spray?”

“And tell us--”

“--again!”

“--about that time she swore she saw Prince Charles at Woodstock?”

Lady laughed brightly. “It’ll be fun whether that young rapscallion of yours shows up or not. We always have so much fun together, anyway.”

As Lady gently clasped Marian’s hand, the redheaded young woman had to admit that that was very true.

\--

_Milton Heights was the very seat and definition of propriety._

_After all, the greater part of propriety is hiding what you’re really up to._

_It does help, however, to have friends to help you keep it discreet._


	2. Chapter 2

_When Mr. Ladybug died--and left most of the world with the terribly uncharitable thought that it was about time--Mrs. Ladybug had been rather at odds and ends. All of her friends in the city were his friends, and to be perfectly honest, she didn’t like them much. She’d been quite involved with the children’s hospital in the city, but she was getting on in years, and her husband had left her a respectable fortune on which to retire. 60 years young, she did away with the elegant rowhouse in the city and settled in the rather more peaceful neighborhood of Milton Heights, on the other side of town._

_Once there, she decided that she was, at last, going to find the kind of community that she had sorely lacked while living downtown._

_Milton Heights was a pleasant neighborhood of pseudo-Victorian townhouses and a few single-family homes, the tree-lined streets shading the lovely front lawns and gardens of the inhabitants. Swallowed into the city some years ago, the neighborhood was walking distance to a rather hopping part of town that contained shops, restaurants, and a cinema. The local elementary school was only a few blocks away, next to a lovely library and a community center._

_As soon as the movers left and Mrs. Ladybug was standing in the middle of her cluttered, boxed-up living room, there was a knock at the door._

_Opening it with a tremulous smile, Mrs. Ladybug met a smiling, chipper middle-aged woman with a tie-dye bandana covering her pale blonde hair._

_“Hello there!” the woman said, her voice high and pleasant and colored with a lovely Scottish brogue. “My name is Ms. Kluck; I live just down the street from you! I saw that you bought this house--such a very lovely place--and I wanted to be sure to welcome you to the neighborhood.”_

_“Oh, thank you,” Mrs. Ladybug said, smiling. “I would invite you in, only I’m afraid it’s terribly messy.”_

_“Of course, of course,” Ms. Kluck said understandingly. “I only wanted to say hello and drop off a tin of biscuits for you. It’s nice to have something homemade while you unpack your kitchen, isn’t it? And do come by and have a cup of tea when you can--I’m home most days and I’d adore the company!”_

_Mrs. Ladybug accepted the biscuits with great delight and chatted a little more with the effervescent woman, astonished to have met someone so nice, so quickly. She had obviously been living in the wrong area._

_She had tea several times with Ms. Kluck, who took her around to visit Mr. Jock and Mr. Trusty, an elderly pair of bachelors who lived in either side of a duplex down the street. It was from them that she learned that the community center was the heart of the neighborhood and Mrs. Ladybug soon took herself down to meet the rest of Milton Heights._

_With the elementary school just down the way, the community center did a pretty fair business in the summer months, as it offered a summer camp. When Mrs. Ladybug moved in, however, school had just gone into session and the place was quite empty._

_In the course of about a week she met many of people who lived in the neighborhood. The young, lovely, and somewhat aloof Miss Spider taught a beginner’s French class and ran a French literature study group, which Mrs. Ladybug only attended twice before deciding that it wasn’t quite her thing--entirely too much Baudelaire. A rather nervous yoga instructor named Earthworm only had to demonstrate the downward dog once before she decided that yoga was not at all for her. An elderly starlet taught a very invigorating aerobics class that Mrs. Ladybug quite enjoyed, even if her instructor was a little deaf. The janitor and summer camp gym instructor was a rough-and-tumble sort that Mrs. Ladybug did not entirely approve of. He hung around Miss Spider’s classes and never seemed to pay any attention at all._

_But she hit it off best with the elegant, dapper Mr. Grasshopper, who taught a music class. The two saw eye to eye on most matters, and his subtle, wicked sense of humor perfectly suited her more bubbly, cheerful demeanor. Upon finding out that he lived in one of the townhouses just across from her new home, they formed a much stronger friendship, constantly popping in and out of each other’s houses with a mutual neighbor, Ms. Kluck, often in tow. With Mr. Grasshopper’s encouragement, Mrs. Ladybug began teaching a craft brewing course, a peach wine of her own devising becoming quite popular._

_Happy as she was, Mrs. Ladybug couldn’t help but find that something was missing. She had many friends and was perfectly content with her neighborhood, but she missed having a man about the house. Mr. Ladybug hadn’t been all that good for much, she’d concede, but it had been nice to have a warm body in bed with her and someone to kiss her on the cheek, even as a perfunctory gesture._

_She decided it was time to push her relationship with Mr. Grasshopper to the next level. He was handsome, in his way, if a little old-fashioned, and they got along so well and were so comfortable with each other. He was the only man to have ever played an instrument just for her and at 65 he was still a formidable force on the dance floor. All in all, she couldn’t think of a better gentleman caller._

_To that end, Mrs. Ladybug began pulling out all the stops. She began flirting with her friend, and to her delight, he appeared to be receptive and even to flirt back. They went out to several dinners and he always insisted that he pay the check. With all signs pointing in the right direction, Mrs. Ladybug decided to make her move._

_“Buggy?” asked Mr. Grasshopper, leaning away a little as she puckered her lips towards him. Mrs. Ladybug thought that she should invest in a stepstool. As it was, she was lined up to kiss the top button of his jacket. “What are you doing?”_

_“I’m going to kiss you, dear,” Mrs. Ladybug giggled._

_“Oh.” Mr. Grasshopper began to cough. “I--er, Mrs. Ladybug, I...it seems to me that we’ve had a misunderstanding.”_

_Mrs. Ladybug looked up at him, surprised. “Perhaps you’d better come in and have a cup of tea,” she said slowly, wondering what he was on about._

_Mr. Grasshopper was looking rather green as he sat on her sofa and sipped his tea._

_“So...why oughtn’t I kiss you, then?” Mrs. Ladybug asked. “We have been dating.”_

_“Good heavens!” Mr. Grasshopper’s monocle popped away from his eye and clinked against his saucer. “I had no idea you thought we were--no. No, I’m so very sorry to have misled you, but I did not think we were dating.”_

_“Is there a problem?” Mrs. Ladybug asked, rather unhappy with the whole matter._

_“I’m not...well, Buggy, I’m not really...it’s somewhat hard to describe.” He took a slow breath. “I don’t think we are really...compatible, if you understand me. I’m very fond of you, of course, but I do not think we could have a more physical relationship.”_

_Mrs. Ladybug suddenly realized what the problem was. “Oh, I understand perfectly, my dear,” Mrs. Ladybug cried. “You needn’t be embarrassed! I know just what the problem is--how very embarrassing, you poor dear. My husband was the same way, in his later years.”_

_“He was?” Mr. Grasshopper asked, sounding far more astonished than Mrs. Ladybug thought the situation warranted._

_“Oh, yes, yes indeed!” Mrs. Ladybug said, patting Mr. Grasshopper on the knee. “It happens to so many chaps as they get older. But you mustn’t worry about that, dear, if that’s all...there are other ways to go about it, and there are even pills these days that--”_

_“Good heavens!” Mr. Grasshopper cried, flushed bright red. “No! No, you misunderstand entirely! I’m not--not at all, I’m actually quite well for my age in that regard!”_

_“Then what on earth is the matter?” Mrs. Ladybug asked, becoming distressed. “Is it just that you don’t like me?_

_“Oh, my dear Mrs. Ladybug, I like you inordinately,” Mr. Grasshopper said, setting down his tea. “I’m simply...well, to put it discreetly, I wear a green carnation.”_

_Mrs. Ladybug looked at his lapel. His buttonhole was empty. “No, you don’t.”_

_Mr. Grasshopper clicked his tongue. “I mean, I’m a Uranian.”_

_“You are not!” Mrs. Ladybug cried, becoming annoyed. “Stop teasing me! You’re as human as I am, you are not from outer space!”_

_Mr. Grasshopper took one of Mrs. Ladybug’s hands. “My dear Mrs. Ladybug,” he said, looking at her earnestly. “I am very, very fond of musical theater. Indeed, one might say that I am of the theatrical bent.”_

_Mrs. Ladybug looked at him for a moment, before squeezing his hand, laughing gently. “Oh, my poor Mr. Grasshopper,” she sighed, “why didn’t you just tell me?”_

_Mr. Grasshopper smiled and kissed her on her cheek. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, my dear, but you must understand that I’m just not that way.”_

_“Of course, dear, of course. And I thought you were--” Mrs. Ladybug lapsed into giggles. “Oh, you poor dear.”_

_That settled one matter, and with their newly-established situation, life continued on very happily. Mrs. Ladybug did not get the beau she had hoped for, but she was not of the disposition to pine, and Mr. Grasshopper never hesitated to encourage her to pursue whomever she liked. She had a few short, pleasant love affairs with a few different gentlemen, and with those chaps in her bed and her friends just down the street, she considered herself very happy._

_The trouble really started when the community center was put under new management, five years after Mrs. Ladybug had moved to Milton Heights._

_The sisters who ran the place were named Sponge and Spiker. They immediately fired the janitor and replaced him with their own sweet little nephew, whose name was James. They treated the poor boy brutally--more than once, Mrs. Ladybug and Mr. Grasshopper called child services, but nothing ever came of it, no matter what they did. Somehow finding out who had phoned the authorities, Mr. Grasshopper and Mrs. Ladybug were promptly sacked and banned from the building. Earthworm wasn’t far behind them. Old Madame Glowworm and Miss Spider were the last to go, the latter having been discovered feeding the small and malnourished boy, though they held out quite a while._

_Thus disenfranchised, it was the rabble-rousing former-janitor Mr. Centipede that led the charge of protests, dragging Earthworm to the picket line. Mr. Grasshopper and Miss Spider wrote dozens of very biting, erudite letters to the editors of every newspaper they could find, and several to the county boards. Mrs. Ladybug dropped a word to Ms. Kluck that a real political movement was occurring, and with her typical civic zeal, the middle-aged woman brought in a busload of protesters and called all the news organizations she knew._

_At last, however, it was James that played the pivotal role. Escaping the clutches of his furious aunts and speaking into the microphone held by a local news correspondent, James revealed to the surprised (but not at all shocked) group that his aunts had been embezzling county funds and detailed the terrible abuse he’d been suffering. The performance of his enraged aunts had sealed the deal, and they officially sacked and destined for jail time, their nephew removed from their custody._

_Under the management of Madame Glowworm (who proved to be quite adept at organizing and improving civic institutions, for all that her hearing plagued her) the community center was flourishing again. James, having been adopted by Miss Spider, attended the elementary school and led his own storytelling group after school. He visited his friends in the neighborhood often, living with Miss Spider in her elegant attic apartment and coming and staying with the rest of his new family whenever he liked._

_Mr. Grasshopper, who had been filmed providing the music of his violin during many of the all-night pickets, was hired by the Philharmonic Orchestra in the city and often played as a frontlining soloist. Mr. Centipede was rehired as the janitor, although he held onto the odd jobs in the neighborhood he’d taken to make up for his rather long unemployment._

_All was generally well._

\--

The noise of old Mr. Hautecourt’s jalopy shook Jock out from the hedges, where he’d been assiduously attacking the outlying branches and tufts of greenery. If the nonagenarian lawyer was visiting Madame Bonfamille, then it must be nearly--the retired banker dug hurriedly into his vest pocket for his pocketwatch, wondering that it had gotten so late in the morning so quickly.

“Trusty?” he called, standing on his toes to try and see into his neighbor’s yard. “Trusty? Did you collect Lady? Are you back with the girl, laddie?”

A loud snore reverberated over the hedge.

Jock grumbled, putting away his shears and hurrying to his back gate, and hustled up the walk to Trusty’s back porch.

The former police detective was lying stretched out on one of his porch chairs, taking a mid-morning nap with the newspaper spread over his lap and chest. He snored in huge, stuttering gulps of breath, his Adam’s apple throbbing against his shirt collar as he breathed through his mouth.

“Ach, laddie!” Jock cried, shaking the other man. “We’re late to pick up Lady!”

Trusty awoke with a snort, shaking his head, his shoulder-length white hair swaying. He blinked sleepily and ran a pair of fingers over his long, droopy moustache. “What? What? I’ll get that old son of a--I’ll--”

“You are not in the swamps, Trusty, you’re on your back porch a-whiling away the day while our poor Lady waits at the subway stop!” Jock exclaimed. “Come on now, you must get yourself together and get in the car, lad--the poor girl had been left to wait!”

Trusty hopped to his feet. “Miss Lady? Oh! The poor thing--come on, let’s go.”

As they turned to go into the house, the noise of a novelty horn coming from the back alley stopped them. On her motorcycle, Ms. Kluck waved to them. “Yoo hoo! Gentlemen! Hello there!”

“Good morning, Miss Kluck, ma’am,” Trusty said, bowing. “We beg your pardon but we’ve got to go!”

“Oh, but I have something for you!” Ms. Kluck said, pulling up a little closer. Marian sat behind her aunt, both arms wrapped around Ms. Kluck’s generous waist, and from the sidecar sprang Lady, grinning and wind-swept.

“Ach! Lady, you poor girl,” Jock said, hurrying over to meet her and throwing open the fence gate. “Sorry, my dear, we lost track of time.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” Lady smiled, hugging her uncle. “Ms. Kluck was able to sort it all out--but this is why I keep telling you that you need a cell phone!”

“All right, all right, you’ve made your point,” Jock sighed. “We’ll get one tomorrow.”

Trusty ambled up to the fence at his usual loping pace, smiling. “Why, Miss Lady, you look pretty as a picture,” he said, kissing her hand. “It looks like that college of yours is treating you just fine.”

“Thank you, Ms. Kluck, we’re in your debt,” said Jock, rather shamefaced.

“Oh, think nothing of it, boys, nothing at all! Always a pleasure to have Lady along for the ride!” Ms. Kluck replied, as Marian clambered down into the sidecar. “Now, you boys come by for tea sometime soon, all right? I’ll be expecting you!”

Trusty bowed to her as Marian waved to Lady. With a few churns of the engine, Ms. Kluck was off and away, roaring back down the alley and towards the street.

“Well, come in, lass, you must be parched,” Jock said, puttering up the walk as if he owned it. “We’ll have a cup of tea into you in no time.”

Trusty picked up Lady’s suitcases and walked with her as she followed Jock.

“Uncle Trusty,” she said in an undertone. “You will keep your promise to teach me how to shoot, won’t you?”

Trusty hushed her, grinning brightly. “Of course I will, Miss Lady--but don’t try telling Jock that,” he said cautioning. “He’ll shut down our whole operation. This is covert stuff, strictly need-to-know basis.”

“All right,” Lady said. “Can I invite Marian along, too, as long as she keeps it top-secret?”

“I’d be very happy to teach Miss Marian how to handle a gun,” Trusty agreed. “I think ever fine young woman should be able to shoot any man that won’t shoot for her.”

Lady giggled and held the door open for her uncle, looking up into his home. Functionally identical, Jock and Trusty’s homes were as different as the men themselves. Trusty’s house was open and bright, the windows each straining to make the most of light and breeze in the summer heat. He put large mirrors on the walls, trying to make the space larger, and still kept an old-fashioned parlor room, though it was never used. He liked the pale paint and upholstery that so flattered the grand houses in his home state of Louisiana. He kept a fully-stocked liquor cabinet that he’d been giving Lady nips of since she was a little girl and could always be counted on to provide grandly for any occasion that could possibly be improved by Southern hospitality.

Just a wall away, Jock’s house was a compact, close space, full of overstuffed leather furniture and heavy, impressive portraits and paintings of ships, battles, and stark Highland moors crowding each other for room on the walls. Jock had far more books than Trusty, who could nurse a single Western novel for the better part of two months, and the overflowing mahogany shelves jostled against each other. Family pride characterized Jock’s home, which contained several throw blankets in his family tartan, a full fine-dress kilt kept in a massive shadow box, and even a suit of armor that he claimed belonged to a long-dead ancestor.

Once upon a time, Lady reflected, she would’ve lived in one of these houses. If she hadn’t been emancipated, she’d have bounced between these two homes, both of them just as much her home as the other.

Each man kept his photographs on the mantel of their identical fireplaces. Only one picture was shared between them, and indeed it was the only part of the houses that was alike. It was a long black-and-white panorama picture of an older lady, a young man, and a young woman and many, many dozens of children, all lined up and smiling irrepressibly. Once Lady had counted all of the children, and found to her astonishment that there were exactly 98 children and three adults--101 in all.

Lady still didn’t know the details of the photograph, or why it should be so important to the both of them. She thought it must have something to do with how they’d first met--otherwise, it was simply far too unusual a coincidence to be believable.

Looking at the picture again as Jock handed her a glass of Trusty’s world-famous lemonade, Lady decided that this summer she would make it a point to find out the story behind those pictures.

\--

Mr. Grasshopper and Mrs. Ladybug were enjoying their mid-morning perambulation when the elderly Mr. Hautecourt turned the corner of the street behind them, shouting “Ta-ra-ra Boom de ay” at the top of his voice. The horn wailed as he wove through the streets and nearly mowed down the pair of pedestrians on the sidewalk. Moving quickly, Mr. Grasshopper managed to snatch up Mrs. Ladybug, who let out a shriek of fright, and pulled her away just as Mr. Hautecourt’s wheel jumped the curb just where her left foot had been. His banging, jittering jalopy spluttered a little further down the street before he yanked the gear into reverse and clattered back toward them.

“Sorry!” Mr. Hautecourt bellowed over the noise of the antique car. “Sorry, my dear, I didn’t quite see you there!”

“I should imagine not!” Mr. Grasshopper said back, not quite raising his voice as much as talking loudly. He put both hands on the shoulders of the shaking Mrs. Ladybug, squeezing her gently. “I think it’s time you ought to consider hiring a driver, Mr. Hautecourt!”

“Oh, poppycock, Grasshopper old boy!” Mr. Hautecourt laughed. “I can drive this old girl just fine, when I have careful pedestrians like you about! No harm done, I hope! Are you at all hurt, Madame Ladybug?”

“No!” Mrs. Ladybug said, still quivering. “Just a little shaken up!”

Mr. Hautecourt held out his hand for her, his eyes comically distorted by the ancient aviator goggles he wore. Mrs. Ladybug hesitated before giving him her hand. He gently kissed her knuckles with a smile. Mrs. Ladybug jumped and retreated as Mr. Hautecourt’s car gave an almighty bang.

“Oop! Only a little go left in her! So long, lady and gentleman!” Mr. Hautecourt cried, flattening the gas pedal beneath his foot. The car lurched ahead, racing unsteadily down the rest of the street and turning in at the palatial driveway of the Bonfamille mansion.

“All right, my dear?” asked Mr. Grasshopper, tucking Mrs. Ladybug’s hand into his elbow. Mrs. Ladybug took a rather trembling step.

“Oh, yes, thank you, Mr. Grasshopper,” she said, laughing nervously. “If it hadn’t been for you...”

Mr. Grasshopper patted the back of her hand. “I think Mr. Hautecourt is getting to be rather too old to drive. Let me walk on the curbside from now on, my dear--I can leap at a moment’s notice without startling you.”

Mrs. Ladybug tightened her grip on Mr. Grasshopper and shook off the last of the fright, strolling down the sidewalk in the sun and admiring all the fine early summer flowers. When they reached the end of the street, they could hear the strains of Carmen coming from the upper windows of the mansion of Adelaide Bonfamille. Mr. Grasshopper paused and Mrs. Ladybug stood behind him, looking up. As the music played, they caught the shapes of stubby, gangly Mr. Hautecourt tangoing with the laughing, elegant Madame Adelaide.

“I think I would give my right foot to have performed with her in her prime,” Mr. Grasshopper observed. “I have an old record of that performance. The clearest, most passionate, most brilliant Carmen you could imagine.”

“Mr. Hautecourt would seem to agree with you.”

“There’s love for you,” Mr. Grasshopper said sagely, beginning to walk again, changing arms with Mrs. Ladybug to keep her well-away from the curb. “More than 50 years of it.”

“Oh, stuff,” said Mrs. Ladybug, shaking her head. “Yes, he’s a bit kooky, but he could stand to tell her, I should think.”

“Perhaps she already knows,” Mr. Grasshopper replied. “In any event, they seem perfectly happy.”

“True enough,” Mrs. Ladybug said. “Still, if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s pining,” she added, nudging Mr. Grasshopper in the ribs.

“Oh!” he breathed, before frowning down at her. “My dear Mrs. Ladybug, I am not pining.”

“You certainly are,” Mrs. Ladybug sniffed. “Positively panting, my dear man--you are transparent to me.”

“I merely gave the man a job.”

“You jolly well saved his hide when he was out in the cold,” Mrs. Ladybug replied. “‘Getting too old to tend your garden’ indeed!”

Mr. Grasshopper clicked his tongue. “I am undeniably fond of him,” he admitted, “and although he is a magnificent bonehead, he comported himself admirably in dire straits and showed remarkable quality of character.”

“I see,” Mrs. Ladybug said thoughtfully. “And what does that have to do with the fact that you are set on flirting with him about your honeysuckle and hedgerows?”

Mr. Grasshopper pinched her arm lightly. “Mr. Centipede and I are most often quarrelling on the subject of my garden, I shall have you know. Honestly, Buggy, you make it sound so sordid.”

“Nothing wrong with that!” Mrs. Ladybug replied. “You could use a bit of sordidness in your life. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you show such an interest in a chap--certainly never seen you have a gentleman caller. And anyway, you are never so alive as when you are quarrelling with someone.”

“Buggy--”

“Besides, he’s seen you being musical at him, those nights on the picket line. You’re at your very best when you’re being musical.”

Mr. Grasshopper opened his mouth, only to be interrupted by the tooting of Ms. Kluck’s motorcycle. “Hello, dears, hello!”

Mr. Grasshopper smiled, relieved of the need to respond to Mrs. Ladybug. “It is a day for vehicular menaces,” he observed in an undertone to Mrs. Ladybug, before smiling cheerfully at Ms. Kluck. “Hello again, Ms. Kluck--ah, and hello, Miss Marian! You are looking very well.”

“Thank you, sir,” Marian said, over the noise of the motorcycle. “Hello, Mrs. Ladybug. How are you? I’m very much looking forward to seeing James again!”

“I’m glad to hear it, dear, thank you!” Mrs. Ladybug cried. “Perhaps you could turn off the motor, Klucky?”

“No time, dearie!” Ms. Kluck replied. “We’re off to the grocery store! Anything you’d like?”

“More tea, please!” Mrs. Ladybug replied. “The kind Mr. Grasshopper mentioned this morning, dear, he wants to try some!”

Mr. Grasshopper was hard-pressed not to hide his face in his palm in the presence of the innocent Miss Marian.

Ms. Kluck laughed aloud. “I’ll get the biggest box I can find! Tell me all about it later, Buggy dearest, I’m keen to help!” She twisted the handle of the motorcycle and she and her niece shot away.

“I’m going to help you,” Mrs. Ladybug said decisively, looking up at Mr. Grasshopper with an expression that brooked no argument and had done her in good stead when she used to work with children.

Mr. Grasshopper sighed, not quite as reluctantly as he would’ve liked, and they continued their walk.


	3. Chapter 3

It would have been very unfair to claim that Duchess O’Malley (neé Bonfamille) was not as magnificent a singer as her mother, although perhaps it would’ve been technically true. The fact of the matter was that Mrs. O’Malley had never been professionally trained in music, as her mother had been--the elegant, pale soprano was only interested in music for art’s sake, which, to some extent, was precisely the kind of attitude that Mr. Grasshopper appreciated most. It should come as no surprise that her voice was not as strong as Madame Bonfamille’s, but it scarcely mattered, when it was lovely in its own right and offered without the expectation of recompense.

Two of her children were of the musical bent, and although Mrs. O’Malley generally oversaw her children’s practice herself, when she learned that there was an accomplished violinist who taught lessons mere blocks from her home, she took them to him for further training.

The charmingly-named Berlioz was slowly growing out of that regrettable age that takes its pleasure in the torment of its siblings, and young Miss Marie was a somewhat proud but likable girl whose sniffiness towards her brother never failed to remind Mr. Grasshopper of the joy that was open, unassuming James Henry Trotter.

Today they were working on Fauré’s Rêve d’Amour, which would’ve been fine, if the children could work together, or were a little older, or even if it had been just less of a beautiful day outside.

But all things together, the children were restless, and getting on each other's nerves--and consequently, getting on Mr. Grasshopper’s nerves, too.

After the third attempt at startling Marie out of her range, Mr. Grasshopper glowered at the pair. “Master Berlioz,” he said, in what Mrs. Ladybug liked to refer to as his Impressive Parliamentary Voice, “perhaps you could remain within a range that is more pleasing to the human ear than the canine?”

Marie snickered.

“And I would ask you, Miss Marie, to attempt not to cut short your notes,” Mr. Grasshopper added. “We can work on elocution at any time--I would prefer that you sing the music first and the words second.”

Berlioz snickered.

“Once more, please,” their tutor said, and the music began again.

\--

Mr. Centipede thought that if he had to listen to that damned song one more time, he was going to cut his head off with his gardening shears.

It wasn’t enough that the girl was screechy and her bratty little brother liked to try to throw her off balance and make her whine, but that it was the same part of music, over and over and over again, for nearly an hour.

There just wasn’t any reason for it. It was torture. It had to be contrary to the Geneva convention!

He and Mr. Grasshopper didn’t seen eye to eye on a lot of things, but he thought he might have a little more sympathy for the guy, if he dealt with this kind of thing for a living. Made a man glad to work out of doors with his hands.

Especially when you got to take in the sights.

Mr. Centipede was hard-pressed not to growl aloud when a gorgeous little thing pulled up in front of the house in a white convertible, stepping out with a motion of her shoulders and hips that threatened to make him drool. She was dressed all in white, a big pair of dark sunglasses over her eyes, red mouth curved in a way that God himself must’ve designed.

She slowly swayed up the steps, pausing to smile at him as she went.

“Ma’am,” he said, lifting his cap.

“Good afternoon,” she said, in a voice that was breathy and sweet. Centipede had the funny feeling that his heart was hammering out of his chest like in the cartoons.

Up the stairs she went, and damn if the back wasn’t as gorgeous as the front. Centipede buried his spade in the ground to try to keep himself busy out on the front yard.

\--

When the door rang, Marie and Berlioz practically fell over one another to answer it. Mr. Grasshopper followed them and managed to meet them as they threw open the door to meet their mother.

“Hello, my darlings,” Mrs. O’Malley said, kissing each of them on the head. “Oh, but did you run off in the middle of your lesson?”

“Not at all, madame, we were nearly finished for the day,” Mr. Grasshopper said, quietly thinking how it wasn’t a bloody moment too soon. “I can procure the sheet music we worked with today, so that they may study under your tutelage.”

“Wonderful!” Mrs. O’Malley smiled, as Marie and Berlioz grimaced. “That would be delightful, thank you, Mr. Grasshopper.”

He retrieved the necessary documents and, in an impressively subtle performance of sleight-of-hand, had a check with his payment in his hand as he passed her the papers.

Mrs. O’Malley flicked quickly through the papers. “Then we shall see you next week?”

“I look forward to it,” Mr. Grasshopper said, bowing at the waist.

“What do you say, children?” Mrs. O’Malley asked Marie and Berlioz.

“Thank you, Mr. Grasshopper,” they chorused with no especial enthusiasm.

Mr. Grasshopper smiled. “Good day to you,” he said, seeing them to the door and down the steps. “Enjoy your weekend,” Mr. Grasshopper said, as they pulled away from the curb and headed down the street.

Over his shoulder, he heard Mr. Centipede whistle under his breath.

“Don’t be rude,” he said in a rather sharp tone, as he ascended the staircase.

“Can you blame me?” Mr. Centipede asked, waggling his eyebrows. “You don’t see a dame like that every day!”

“I suppose that you at least had the decency to wait until she was gone,” Mr. Grasshopper allowed. “Are you thirsty?”

Mr. Centipede smirked. “I don’t figure a fancy guy like you drinks beer, eh?”

Mr. Grasshopper’s posture straightened, though Mr. Centipede hadn’t thought that was possible. “Is a Belgian wheat acceptable?” he asked, like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

Centipede couldn’t help but grin. “All right, man, now you’re talking my language!”

“Speaking your language,” Mr. Grasshopper corrected, walking up the rest of the steps to his door. In a few minutes, he returned with two frosty bottles, two glasses, and a shiny church key on--unbelievably--a silver platter.

“You’re kidding,” Centipede drawled, squinting to see the platter as the sun gleamed off of it.

Mr. Grasshopper gave him a supercilious look that couldn’t quite hide the amused quirk of his lips. With a clever bit of prestidigitation with the church key, he removed the top from bottle one-handed and began to pour it into the glass.

Centipede took the glass with one muddy, gardening-gloved hand, partly just to show Mr. Grasshopper exactly what he thought of this kind of excessive niceness. Mr. Grasshopper curled his lip a bit.

“Will that be all, sir?” he asked, placing heavy, sarcastic emphasis on the last word.

“You missed your calling as a butler, Jeeves,” Centipede said, winking at him. “Guy could get used to this kind of service.”

Mr. Grasshopper opened his own beer, clearing his throat discreetly. “Hmm. Do take a look at the ivy, if you will. I rather fancy it’s gotten out of hand,” he said, eyes sliding away from making direct contact with Mr. Centipede.

“You ain’t going to stay out here and drink that?” Centipede asked. “I hear it’s pretty hard to drink and play an instrument at the same time.”

“If you’re sure I won’t be underfoot,” Mr. Grasshopper said in hesitating tones.

“Nah, relax. I’m not going to work on anything till I finish this. Coffee break, you know what I mean?”

“Indeed,” Mr. Grasshopper murmured, sipping his beer slowly, ignoring the glass altogether.

“Park it.”

“I shall not ‘park it,’ thank you,” Mr. Grasshopper said.

Centipede looked him up and down, smirking. “You’re, what, pressing seventy? What’s the matter? Don’t think you’d be able to get back up?”

“How dare you,” Mr. Grasshopper said snappishly. “I can get up just fine."

"Can you, now?” Mr. Centipede asked with a leer. Mr. Grasshopper turned bright red and, muttering something about incorrigibility, stalked up the steps into his house.

Mr. Centipede couldn’t help but laugh. He downed the last of his drink and set the muddy glass on the porch, heading back to take a look at that ivy.

\--

_Before his rather abrupt change of occupation, Mr. Grasshopper had concerned himself with only a few things: the progress of his pupils, his friendships with his neighbors, the quality of his own musical ability, and his garden._

_Although Mr. Grasshopper was not exactly the type to get more in touch with nature, he was an Englishman to his core and he was consequently enormously fond of gardens. It had been a bit of a blow to him, to find that between teaching music as a private tutor and at the community center, keeping up with Mrs. Ladybug, and his own advancing age (69 years old, good God in heaven), he could no longer devote very much time to his own flowerbeds. He should like very much to have at least a small garden to sit in during the spring and summer months, and a well-sculpted patch of neat, lush verdancy to return home to._

_He had hired a succession of gardeners and handymen, none of whom measured up to his standards. Mr. Grasshopper had very set opinions about the optimum ratios between the diameter of a perfect blooming rose and the length of its stalk, and the shape and density that best suited hedges._

_Although he’d had his differences of opinion (often, and usually at almost every imaginable volume) with Mr. Centipede during the man’s tenure at the community center, he had been rather more appalled than he anticipated, when Sponge and Spiker threw him out. Mr. Grasshopper didn’t pretend to like the man very much, personally, but as much of a lollygagger as he seemed to be, his job was always done and done well by the time he was loitering and smoking those noxious cigars. And the children appeared to absolutely adore him._

_It had not sat right with Mr. Grasshopper. In an attempt to satisfy his sense of unease--and to undo the damage meted out to his beloved wisteria arbour by neglect and his last gardener--he had made a somewhat awkward overture to Mr. Centipede on the subject of landscaping._

_The janitor, understandably irate yet unpleasantly colorful of language, accepted the proposal at a surprisingly reasonable rate per week._

_So began a quite literal turf war. Mr. Grasshopper had made very detailed plans when he’d first moved into his home, and his garden’s layout had not changed significantly in that time._

_Coming home with the shame of his own sacking still burning in his blood to find that all of his Easter lilies had been uprooted and flung across the garden to budge in amongst his irises was something of an appalling surprise._

_The argument that had ensued had been, he would admit, somewhat overly dramatic and possibly improper. (Mrs. Ladybug claimed that on windy nights she could hear the ghostly echo of their shouting match against the leaves of the trees. Mr. Grasshopper found this entertaining but impossibly silly.) He’d not fired Mr. Centipede on the spot, his own embarrassment and outrage making it seem rather too poignant, but they’d parted ways with mutual animosity, Mr. Grasshopper deeming him an irredeemable scoundrel and Mr. Centipede probably grumbling equally unpleasant things about him._

_In the weeks that followed, Mr. Grasshopper was rather too preoccupied to pay his garden any attention, between advocating for James and watching the rest of his neighbors be banned from their community’s center. By the time poor dear Old Madame Glowworm had had her notice cruelly screeched in her face, he was ready to dispense with courtesy and move things into a more physical realm._

_He wasn’t at all surprised to see that the pugilistic Mr. Centipede was on the crest of the wave of dissatisfaction, nor was he shocked to see that a physical demonstration was the man’s weapon of choice. It was a rather comical image, the stereotypically masculine Mr. Centipede chomping on a cigar and dragging the weak-willed, pessimistic yoga instructor around behind him. The two of them paced back and forth, Mr. Centipede jabbing a picket sign furiously into the air and barking a somewhat uninspired chant, Earthworm dragging his sign along the ground and responding meekly._

_Mrs. Ladybug hurried Mr. Grasshopper back to their block to make provisions for the protestors and to roust Ms. Kluck into action. Mr. Grasshopper phoned Miss Spider and they spent the afternoon on the sidewalk under a makeshift canopy of blankets and poles, writing out angry letters and watching as more and more protesters--certainly many who did not live in the area but must have owed Ms. Kluck a favor--marched back and forth on the street._

_When evening came, some of the protesters left, but a surprising number set up tents on the sidewalk and kept up the fight. Such tenacity brought even keener interest from those who worked during the day and were not in the neighborhood when the strike began at 7AM. A few police officers arrived at the behest of Sponge and Spiker, but since Mrs. Ladybug had managed to distract Ms. Kluck (who was never all that fond of police and would take the opportunity to be impertinent if it meant another demonstration-related arrest on her record), they mostly milled about and chatted with the residents. Old Mr. Trusty from down the street was present, and he and the officers clearly recognized each other, which probably helped in ways that would never be entirely clear._

_With the police came the news vans, which adequately distracted Ms. Kluck and brought even more lookie-loos out to see what the trouble was. By nine PM, there was general milling everywhere, and the protest had become a much larger sit-in than anyone could have expected._

_By eleven, things were winding down a bit, people retreating to their tents to sleep and continue the fight in the morning. Earthworm threw himself upon one of the lawn chairs Mrs. Ladybug had brought but Mr. Centipede continued to drag himself along, sunburnt, sweaty, and obviously exhausted. He didn’t chant, but he kept walking back and forth, back and forth, even when the clocks finally showed midnight and Mrs. Ladybug began to snore softly in her chair beside him._

_Mr. Grasshopper thought it was something remarkable, how determined Mr. Centipede was. He had thought him quite flighty, all empty bravado and ignorant boasting, but there he was, pressing on with no one but his own conscience to keep him from going to bed. The man was quite a bit more full of integrity than Mr. Grasshopper had given him credit for being._

_Mr. Grasshopper walked the drowsy Mrs. Ladybug home and stopped by his own house for a few items. He returned promptly to the protest, carrying a foldable chair and a blanket, and his violin case. He managed to gently steer the half-conscious Mr. Centipede into the chair and cover him over. The man argued faintly before immediately falling asleep, snoring quietly. Mr. Grasshopper rosined his bow, checked his strings, and began to play something quiet to keep the heart of the protest alive in the dark hours, to remind whoever was listening that their anger may sleep but that someone was keeping watch. The melody of Va pensiero was the obvious choice, although he played it so slowly that it was practically a lullaby._

_The last of the news vans had been packing up, but when they heard his violin, they turned the camera on him. He glowered a bit at them for the impertinence, but couldn’t quite feel any heat in it. Music might be his true love, but he would be a liar to say he didn’t enjoy the limelight. Letting the melody carry him along, he focused only on the sound of his instrument, the swelling heart of the partita, the fingering of the strings, the powerful jut of his bow, the way he moved and shifted to push more music, more motion out of his body, the night with its clear dark sky and the rows of people in tents, sleeping out of doors to keep themselves close to something sacred that they all meant to keep. Va pensiero turned into the melody of Faure’s Libera me Domine, and then onto an adaption of the Moonlight Sonata, and then, why, he hardly knew what he was playing..._

_He was thinking about what it took to put into action what everyone else was thinking but didn’t dare to do. Mr. Grasshopper would never have made a sign and begun picketing the community center, not in a million years--he didn’t know many who would. There was something very remarkable in someone for whom that was the first option. He was impressed, very, very impressed indeed._

_He was nearly to the end of the movement he was playing when he heard a voice. “That music!”_

_He startled, nearly screeching the strings, jumping to see little James behind him, thin, ragged, exhausted._

_“Oh, James!” Mr. Grasshopper said, stopping short. “Did I disturb you? So sorry. I-I--” His brain caught up with his body. Playing Bach for the man! Bach! He hardly ever played Bach for anyone! What on earth was he thinking, playing the very most perfect music he knew for an unconscious janitor? “I’ll put this away--”_

_“No, no,” insisted James. “I like it. I could hear it at my aunts’ house.”_

_Mr. Grasshopper fed the boy one of Mrs. Ladybug’s sandwiches and they sat together, a little away from the snoring Mr. Centipede._

_“They’re awfully angry,” James said softly, looking back at the community center and the little house behind it. “Furious. They wanted the police to arrest you all.”_

_“Marvelous thing, the right to assemble,” Mr. Grasshopper observed, plucking a string. “Will you stay with us, now that you’ve managed to get away from them?”_

_James looked back at the house, before looking up at Mr. Grasshopper. “Where is Miss Spider?”_

_Mr. Grasshopper took the boy to the Frenchwoman, who met him with a sleepy smile that was nevertheless brighter than any Mr. Grasshopper had seen on her face before. He left the boy with her, relieved to his bones that the child was out of that house of hell behind the building._

_He went back out onto the sidewalk and listened carefully to the noises of slumber. The news van had gone away, the police officers had retreated to their cars, and he was the only waking thing for several blocks._

_He picked up his bow and began Pachelbel’s Canon in D._

_He played softly until dawn began to light the sky and he was swaying more from exhaustion than from his music. Fortunately, Earthworm was already up and doing a sun salutation, and Mr. Grasshopper left him to start the fight for the day, retreating to the lean-to canopy and collapsing, bow in one hand and violin in the other, into a chair._

_They had to keep it up for three days more before the strike broke with James’ announcement. There had been a few retreats, a few police actions--Ms. Kluck needed to be sprung more than once from the city holding pen--half a dozen interviews, several quarrels amongst protesters, and of course a few politicians appearing to make a few bland statements._

_During the day, houses opened up for protesters to rest, wash up, and use the facilities. At night, there were massive potluck dinners and many dances, for which Mr. Grasshopper had often been asked to play the fiddle as Mrs. Ladybug taught people line dances. He’d been filmed more than once playing the violin and didn’t entirely like it, but decided that it was the better part of valor not to raise a fuss._

_Mr. Centipede came a little more into the community aspect of the thing when a picket shift schedule was worked out and there were people marching at all times. Boisterous, irrepressible, and full of stories (mostly of them likely entire fictions), he was well-received during meals and evenings--even to the extent of earning a dance with Miss Spider._

_James came through in the end, and the protest ended with the formal termination of the sisters’ positions. James, at the time, was briefly in the custody of the state, but would soon be relinquished to Miss Spider’s tender care. Everyone packed up and went home, faintly exhilarated and tired to their bones._

_Mr. Grasshopper went home, took a long shower, and slept for several hours. When he awoke in the middle of the afternoon, he went downstairs, made a pot of tea, and listened to the recordings on his answering machine. One was Mrs. Ladybug, inquiring about dinner; one was Miss Spider, asking if he mightn’t provide a character statement for her in the adoption process; and one was from the city Philharmonic Orchestra, which wanted to set up an interview with him immediately, having seen his performances during the protest on television._

_It was a little too much after days of unusually severe tension. The Philharmonic Orchestra, after all these years--he’d entirely given up any hope that he’d ever be a performing musician, so far past his prime. Heart in his mouth and nearly trembling from excitement, he looked out the window of his kitchen, seeking to ground himself with the sight of his garden, only to get another severe shock._

_His Easter lilies, which he would admit under duress had always been a little anemic, were flourishing, their massive white petals and sweet green centers fair and gorgeously vibrant against his long, elegant purple irises. They had thrived in the spot that Mr. Centipede had put them, massively improved from a simple change of space. That part of the garden was bustling with passionate life, where there had been only stately, somewhat frigid propriety before._

_Mr. Grasshopper would later realize that it was the first sign of a serious shift in his priorities, the fact that he immediately picked up the phone and didn’t call Mrs. Ladybug or Miss Spider or the bloody Philharmonic Orchestra that wanted to offer him a position. He called Mr. Centipede, probably waking him for a well-deserved rest, and all-but begged him to continue in his position as gardener._

_He accepted._

 

\--

Although Lady was closer to Jock and Trusty than she was to just about anyone else in the world, she often found herself with the unsettling suspicion that she didn’t really know them at all.

They weren’t really her uncles, of course, but they had always been so very kindly to her. Lady had lived in Milton Heights for as long as she could remember, though they claimed that she had been four when she’d arrived and had only spoken French. Her parents were in the Army and were stationed in the city and often relied upon the kindness of the two elderly gentlemen who offered to keep an eye on Lady after school.

Lady spent many happy afternoons doing jigsaw puzzles on Jock’s carpeted floors or running through Trusty’s house with a blanket draped across her shoulders. When her father brought her back a golden locket for her tenth birthday, Jock and Trusty made exactly the right kind of fuss over it to best please a little princess.

They had always been so very wonderful to her, which was part of why she begged her parents to leave her with them when they had to go to other countries.

“It’s too much of a bother for them,” her father said, and Aunt Sarah would come and keep an eye on her.

Lady did not like her Aunt Sarah at all. Aunt Sarah was mean, and didn’t listen to her, and though she never, ever had any interest in Lady whatsoever, she would still yell and shriek and ground Lady for weeks if she did something wrong.

Aunt Sarah did not like Jock and Trusty, but since she worked in the city during the day, she didn’t have much of an option when it came to Lady’s care after school. That was Lady’s escape, since all of her school friends refused to visit her in the afternoons when Aunt Sarah was around, and Aunt Sarah did not let her go to birthdays or parties of any kind.

Lady’s parents would come home for some months and life would be blissful, and then Aunt Sarah would always arrive to spoil it all. Lady begged her parents not to call her, but when all she could say was that she was harsh and horrid and unkind, her parents would smile at each other and tell her that she would see it differently, someday.

It was such a relief to hear Jock grumble that she was a ‘mean old bat,’ and see the faint tightening of Trusty’s mouth, which was as close as he could come to being uncomplimentary about a lady. They understood.

By the time she was finally in college, it was wonderful to get to avoid Aunt Sarah, even when her parents were away. Dorm life was so much pleasanter--she got to do what she liked, when she liked, and with who she liked. No one asked her who was staying with her in her room, for she was quite alone and without any awful aunts to be rude to her friends.

When she made her plans for coming home for summer break, her parents offered to call Aunt Sarah to stay, “just so that Lady would have some company.”

“No,” Lady said, “thank you. I wouldn’t like to bother her. I’ll be just fine.” She’d never lose her opinion about horrible Aunt Sarah, but it made her parents much more malleable to think that she had.

Jock and Trusty had raised her through her teenage years, being there to support her and love her when no one else in the world seemed to. But all she knew about them was that they’d known each other before they’d moved here. Jock told her about how Trusty had been a police detective, though Trusty had never confirmed it, and a cursory look at Jock’s books told her that he must’ve done something with banking. Both were well-off enough, but how they got their money wasn’t ever made clear.

Surely, it didn’t much matter, or it wouldn’t have, if Jock hadn’t been so secretive about it. Jock was secretive about almost nothing--despite Trusty’s fondness for repeating stories about his grandfather, Jock was always quicker to react and quicker to speak. Whenever Lady asked, Jock’s face would fall slightly; his thick black mustache would droop a little and his eyes would become terribly sad.

“We met a long time ago, lass,” he’d say, “and some day I shall tell you about it.”

But he never did.

Trusty was no more helpful. He would actually clench his jaw when Lady asked about it, eyebrows furrowing in a glower against some enemy she could not sense. He’d shake his head heavily. “It wasn’t any kind of business a good person like you should know about, Miss Lady ma’am,” he’d say, and that was the end of it.

Lady wasn’t the type to be suspicious--it was in her nature to stay open-minded about people. And Jock and Trusty had her complete trust, no matter what.

But she couldn’t help but feel it as a matter of duty to know what it was that made her uncle so very sad.

So she brought Marian one of the pictures early one day, while Jock and Trusty were out in their shared car doing their grocery shopping.

“It is terribly mysterious,” agreed Marian, serving Lady a spoonful of fruit salad and looking at Jock’s copy of the long photograph.

The girls had awoken that morning to find that their uncles and aunt had disappeared. While Marian had long ago grown used to her aunt’s free-spirited tendency to scarper without warning, particularly on weekends, Lady, at least, had the pleasure of a note to inform her of her uncles’ whereabouts. Deciding to spend the morning together, Marian made breakfast and Lady brought the photograph over, knowing it wouldn’t be missed in the two hours it would take Jock to decide exactly what brand of everything he wanted to purchase.

“I would be quite frightened if I thought they were all theirs,” Lady said, tracing one of the rows of children.

“Oh, good heavens, yes,” Marian laughed, at the very thought. “The poor woman! 98 babies!”

“They look very happy, but some of them are quite thin,” Lady pointed out, nibbling on a piece of bacon.

“Perhaps it’s an orphanage,” Marian said. “Open the frame and let’s have a look. I’m sure that if it’s Jock’s, it must be labeled.”

Lady carefully extracted the long sheet from its frame and turned it over. “‘Pongos and children,’” she read, “‘Happily Ever After, 1971.’”

“All the children look to be about ten years old,” Marian observed. “Are you doing anything today? We ought to go down to the library and see what we can find--Aunt Kluck still isn’t entirely sure that a world wide web doesn’t constitute entrapment.”

Lady tucked the picture back into its frame. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go after breakfast. I’m sure nothing much is happening in the neighborhood today.”


	4. Chapter 4

As far as James was concerned, nearly every moment was a good part of the day, since he’d begun living with Miss Spider, but the very best moments were just before he went to sleep and just as he woke up.

 

When he’d lived with Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker, the moment just before he’d gone to sleep had been fraught, his mind and body exhausted but still tense, anticipating at any moment that his aunts would find some reason to unleash their tempers upon him.  And waking up was horrible, because he was suddenly ejected from whatever sweet dream or pleasant oblivion he’d been immersed in, and thrown into a living nightmare.

 

Now, bedtime involved Miss Spider giving him a cup of water and telling him a bedtime story, if he asked for one.  And waking up meant the smell of a plate of breakfast at his spot at the table, and the feeling of her fingers gently brushing his hair off his forehead.  She gave him kisses, too--one on the forehead at night and one on the temple as he ate the delicious food she made for him.  

 

He woke up slowly on Sunday morning, Miss Spider tracing a finger across his forehead.  “James,” she said gently, “time to wake up.  Breakfast is ready.”

 

James sat up, yawning, and stretched his arms above his head.  “Good morning.”

 

“Good morning to you,” Miss Spider smiled.  “Come and eat or it will get cold.  We need to get you over to visit the others.”

 

James hopped out of bed and stuffed his feet into his slippers, hurrying to the breakfast table.  Miss Spider had made pancakes for breakfast, and he ate nearly half a dozen of them as she slowly sipped her black coffee and listened to the radio.  

 

James put his dirty plate in the dishwasher and hurried off to the bathroom to wash off the black lipstick print that Miss Spider had left on the side of his head.  He grinned at it in the mirror, sorry to wash away the evidence that someone loved him.  

 

By the time he was dressed, James was buzzing with excitement.  He only lived a few blocks away from Mr. Grasshopper and Mrs. Ladybug, but it was always a special treat to stay over with them.  He’d miss Miss Spider very much, but it would only be for a week or two--and then, of course, summer camp at the community center would start.  In the meantime, he’d get to stay with the rest of his family, and maybe with the older girls who lived a little down the road and who were always so much fun.  

 

He packed everything he thought he might need into a bag, only to have Miss Spider go through it herself.

 

“Maybe a few more pairs of socks, James,” she said, peering into the suitcase.  “And your toothbrush,” she added, lifting a skeptical eyebrow at him.  

 

He grinned and darted off to collect it.  

 

\--

 

Mr. Grasshopper was lying face-down on his pillow with his white hair all ahoo one bright Sunday morning when Mrs. Ladybug came in and shook him violently.

 

“Grasshopper.  Dear, you must get up, it’s terribly important,” she said, her voice earnest.

 

Mr. Grasshopper rolled onto his back and rubbed at his eyes.  “Yes?  What?  Is it James?” he asked, running his fingers through his hair to try and force it into something like compliance.  

 

“No, dear, of course not.  He won’t be here until luncheon,” Mrs. Ladybug tutted.  “It’s far more serious!  It’s that Mr. Centipede outside, tangling with your hedges.  If you’re not quick, you’ll miss him.”

 

Mr. Grasshopper blinked up at Mrs. Ladybug for a moment, before rolling back over onto his face, hiding it in the pillow.

 

Mrs. Ladybug huffed.  “Oh!  You impossible creature!”

 

“I was out until three in the morning, Buggy,” Mr. Grasshopper said, somewhat muffled by the pillow.  “It was a very long recital, with two encores, and the others insisted upon a late supper.  I had to come along and they made those obnoxious arthritis jokes, and I couldn’t get away until two.  The taxi ride took an hour, Mrs. Ladybug.  You must let a man get his rest.”

“You’ve had six whole hours!” Mrs. Ladybug exclaimed.  “You lazy creature--romance will pass you by, at this rate!”  

 

“I hardly think romance is the thing to call it.  I do not think that that young man is romantically inclined, in fact.”  Mr. Grasshopper nestled himself deeper into his bed.  “Good night, my dear Mrs. Ladybug.  I will see you in a few hours.”

 

Mrs. Ladybug had handled too many children in her time to be dissuaded.  She seized the covers with both hands and ripped them off of the bed, revealing her best friend and his rather rumpled sleeping garments.

 

Mr. Grasshopper sat up with a start, staring at her with a shocked expression.  “My good madame!” he said in his most offended, horrified tones.  

 

“I am doing it for your own happiness, Mr. Grasshopper,” Mrs. Ladybug sniffed.  “Here you are lounging about _en dishabille_ all alone when you could be on your porch lounging _en_ rather more respectable, tie-clad _dishabille_ and catching the eye of that young rapscallion!  And you wonder why you go to bed alone!”

 

“I go to bed alone because everyone else is in their beds by the time I stumble through the door at three AM!”

 

“Nonsense.  You are alone because you have not had me to steer you along for the past few years, and I do apologize for it, my dearest Grasshopper.  But I have the reins now!  Get up!  Klucky is downstairs making breakfast, so I suggest you get a move on.”

 

“This is unconscionable!  You and Ms. Kluck have invaded my home and thrust me from my bed!” Mr. Grasshopper protested.

 

“All in the interests of having your dandy handyman thrust you into it again,” Mrs. Ladybug said, with a hint of a naughty smile.  “Time’s a-wasting!  Hop up.”

 

With a mutinous expression, Mr. Grasshopper hopped.

 

\--

 

“I do hope I haven’t overstepped my bounds,” sighed Mrs. Ladybug to Ms. Kluck, who was in the process of pulling hot scones out of the oven.

 

“Was he dressed at all?” Ms. Kluck asked, tapping the crust of one scone.

 

“Oh yes, a little.  Not that I haven’t seen it all before.”

 

“Then you’re fine.  He’s a very moderate fellow, our Mr. Grasshopper.  He won’t hold it against you.”

 

Mrs. Ladybug poured herself a cup of tea.  “I just worry about him.  He’s been alone as long as I’ve known him, and I’m sure he was before then.  He deserves something rather exciting, don’t you think?  It would be so nice for him to have a little someone for a bit of fun.”

 

Ms. Kluck shrugged, smiling, and popped the scones back into the oven.  “You know me, dear, I’m always happy to help with a little matchmaking.”

 

Mr. Grasshopper walked his stairs with a rather thunderous expression.  Genetically incapable of dressing casually, he wore one of his suits and a truly vile tartan bowtie that Mrs. Ladybug abhorred and Ms. Kluck loved.  His allegiance for the day was clearly announced.

 

Mrs. Ladybug took one look at him and tutted.  “Oh, no, no, no, not that horrid thing--”

 

Mr. Grasshopper gave his tie an indulgent tug.  “I think it rather natty, myself.  Good morning, Ms. Kluck,” he said with a tone of slight rebuke.  “Remarkable to find you here so early.”

 

Ms. Kluck offered a nervous puff of a laugh, watching Mrs. Ladybug hurry off upstairs.  “Yes, well, duty called.”

 

“Did it, indeed,” Mr. Grasshopper stated calmly.  “Can I be of any assistance?”

 

“I think the newspaper was just delivered a moment or two ago,” Ms. Kluck said.  “If you’d like that.  Breakfast shall be ready in just a moment.”

 

Mr. Grasshopper nodded and went over to his front door.  Above him, he could hear Mrs. Ladybug’s tiny footsteps thundering desperately towards the stairs to head him off.  He cut several quick steps of his own, his hand on the knob of the door when she cried out from the top of the steps.

 

“Don’t do it!” cried Mrs. Ladybug, hurrying down the steps.  “Oh, have a little kindness for me!  You’ll sabotage yourself if you let that terrible eyesore out of doors!”

 

“You have an objection to my tie?” asked Mr. Grasshopper.

 

“You cruel brute!  Don’t be fatuous, Mr. Grasshopper, you know as well as I do that that tie is ugly, ugly, ugly, and it doesn’t suit you at all,” Mrs. Ladybug insisted.  “I have a better one right here.”

 

Mr. Grasshopper turned the door knob.

 

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Ladybug, sounding as if she were in pain.  “Oh!  How could you, Theodore!”

 

The use of his first name gave him pause and he looked over at Mrs. Ladybug.  Seeing his dear friend in such distress on his account, however hammy and nonsensical, was too much to bear for someone who loved her so well.  Mr. Grasshopper sighed and presented his neck for the yoke.  Mrs. Ladybug stood on the lower stairs to be at eye level with him, whipping the offending garment off from around his throat in a trice and replacing it with a much more handsome, dark green number.  

 

“There,” sighed Mrs. Ladybug, smoothing his lapels.  “So very much better.”

 

“Might I collect my newspaper now, Mrs. Ladybug?” Mr. Grasshopper asked, amused.  

 

“Oh, yes, certainly!  Make a good leg of it, my dear,” Mrs. Ladybug said, all-but pushing him out the door.  “They’re your best features!”

 

Mr. Grasshopper opened his door at last and saw that the negligent paperboy had left his poor newspaper on the middle landing of his two sets of stairs.  He winced a little--he’d not had his tea, after all, and he’d been hoping to wake up a bit more before he had to present himself to the world.

 

And his gardener.

 

Mr. Grasshopper had been neither in pursuit of or pursued by anyone in many years, with the notable exception of the early-days rigamarole with Mrs. Ladybug.  Mrs. Ladybug’s short-lived admiration was something of a shot in the arm to his ego, though it did put him in some dread of the fact that he was apparently enticing to late middle-age widows.  As an intellectual, artistic, somewhat aristocratic man, he supposed he rather was a member of a breed whose appeal was rapidly dying as fewer and fewer people found sartorial pedantry and long conversations endearing or enjoyable.  Even he would have to agree that he didn’t cast a second glance to fellows like himself, most of the time.

 

He prided himself on having excellent taste in every matter but one: intimate relationships.  As far as he was concerned, there were few pleasures greater than elegant conversation and intellectual stimulation, with someone one loved to share it with--and yet.  While that was the picture of perfect happiness when it came to his dear friends, once things began to take a romantic turn, there was nothing more likely to disappoint him than a prospective lover whose interest in him was purely--or even primarily--intellectual.

 

Mr. Grasshopper’s tastes hovered mostly on the opposite side of the spectrum of personality from himself, which he supposed had interesting magnetic implications.  There was something about a fellow who was rough and brash, full of swagger and vitality and bold vigor that turned his head like nothing else could!  And it had burned him far too many times--such traits were often the symptoms of brutes, scoundrels, and hustlers.  When he was quite young, he’d gotten himself into rather precarious assignations thinking that he had found himself the cowboy he craved, only to find himself nearly saddled with a man-child who repulsed him.

 

Added to the fact that he was rather too discreet for his own good, remaining single had been the safest option since he’d moved to Milton Heights.  

 

And he’d been doing perfectly well too, until Mr. Centipede had come along and ruined absolutely everything.

 

If the man had just been a handsome, strutting blackguard, Mr. Grasshopper never would’ve had a problem.  He was, despite a keen appetite for life and a generally optimistic outlook, remarkably jaded when he wanted to be.  He’d never fallen for a pretty face, and with the kind of patently ignorant nonsense Mr. Centipede was in the unfortunate habit of spouting, he would have reached the very outermost boundary of association with the man in the kind of cheerfully mercenary sexual relationship Mrs. Ladybug had with the postman.  Even that would’ve been unlikely, since the man was very likely heterosexual and Mr. Grasshopper did not make a habit of answering the door in a satin dressing down, as Mrs. Ladybug was known to do.

 

It was that damned protest.  If he only hadn’t seen how tenacious the man was, how ridiculously devoted he was to the cause; if only Mr. Centipede’s arrogance had merely been covering for a lazy insecurity, and not an almost-admirable willingness to go to any length, to brave any trouble, so that he might stand up before his peers with the weight of his own efforts to commend him...

 

Well.  Mr. Grasshopper didn’t play his favorite Bach pieces for just anyone.  

 

There was something rather horrid, in discovering that the sort of man you could care for very deeply, the kind of man you had wanted all your life, was thirty years your junior and probably absolutely uninterested.  But even that could’ve been borne with some grace, if Mrs. Ladybug had not decided that the matter needed her particular attention.  He could handle the man well-enough on his own, but with that little peeping face watching out his window, his skin crawled a bit to think that he had an audience.  Worse--an audience that wanted only kind, impossible things for him, that was predisposed to be in his favor and to trust his competence, but was doomed to observe every detail of his inevitable failure.

 

Mr. Centipede would not be able to miss her interfering influence.  The questions her interest would arouse would be horrible.  

 

Hands fluttering a bit without a clear place to put them, Mr. Grasshopper trotted down his steps and scooped up his newspaper with a quick bend of his waist.  Only then did he turn to see that Mr. Centipede was indeed engaged in a tussle with the hedges that grew on the slope of the hill and divided Mr. Grasshopper’s property from that of his next-door neighbors.  The shrubs had gotten rather out of hand, for they grew above the gardener’s head and made Mr. Grasshopper’s home look secretive and antisocial.  The plan was to cut them down to hip-height (well, hip-height on Mr. Centipede, anyway) and open up the area a little more.

 

However, the height of the plants and the slope of the hill appeared to be conspiring against the gardener, whose low, grumbled swearing the aurally-sensitive Mr. Grasshopper could not help but pick up on, several paces away.  The man was shorter than Mr. Grasshopper--though nearly everyone was, to be fair--and only about a head taller than Mrs. Ladybug.  He’d rolled up his sleeves, exposing brown, dark-haired arms, and despite the cool morning air, he had already worked himself into a sweat.  He wore a remarkably old-fashioned brown cap that Mr. Grasshopper wasn’t entirely sure if he found bearable and a pair of suspenders over his white button-up shirt.  He dressed a bit like he was stuck in a 1940s boxing film, which Mr. Grasshopper supposed he could sympathize with, his wardrobe having been stuck mostly between 1890 and 1910 for most of his life.

 

Mr. Grasshopper cleared his throat, about to inquiry after Mr. Centipede’s well-being, when he heard his door creak open.

 

Mrs. Ladybug was sticking her nose out the door, looking curiously down at them.  Mr. Grasshopper gave her a sharp look, but she just waved her hand, encouraging him.  

 

‘Go on,’ she mouthed, before pantomiming the consumption of a cup of tea.

 

Mr. Grasshopper shook his head.  Mr. Centipede didn’t drink tea.

 

Mrs. Ladybug made more insistent motions, even rocking her hips side to side, trying to  communicate something that Mr. Grasshopper wasn’t sure he wanted to understand.

 

He indulged in a brief, somewhat frustrated shooing gesture, but Mrs. Ladybug remained where she was, silently pointing at Mr. Centipede and making the tea motion.

 

Flustered, Mr. Grasshopper shook his head and began to walk back up the steps.  He hadn’t been detected by Mr. Centipede and that was probably for the best.  

 

Coming up the stairs, he glanced at the gardener again.  It was early enough in the morning that the weather hadn’t gotten hot yet, but sooner or later it would become positively dreadful to work in.  He looked back up at Mrs. Ladybug, who looked at him with clenched teeth and quietly stamped her foot.

 

“I swear to you, if you don’t talk to him,” she hissed, “I shall!”

 

Mr. Grasshopper shooed her into the house with some quick, swatting gestures and remained on the porch, closing the door rather too loudly and holding it closed by the knob.  

 

Mr. Centipede glanced up at the porch and Mr. Grasshopper scrambled for something to say.

 

“Good morning, Mr. Centipede.  I hope I find you well.  I am very nearly to breakfast--could I perhaps offer you a cup of coffee?”

 

The gardener lowered his shears, smirking at Mr. Grasshopper and mopping his brow with a checkered handkerchief.  “All right, boss, as long as you don’t dock it from my pay,” he said with the kind of rakish grin that did all sorts of awkward things to Mr. Grasshopper’s heart rhythm.

 

“What sort of draconian creature do you think I am, sir, to penalize my employees for the all-too necessary consumption of caffeine?” Mr. Grasshopper asked, a pale assay at playfulness that seemed to turn to needlessly sequispidealian ash in his mouth.  The inadvertent innuendo nearly made him wince.  “I’ll bring it to you in a moment.”

 

“Nice service, here,” Mr. Centipede replied with a snicker, before turning back to his work.  

 

Mr. Grasshopper darted inside before he could embarrass himself further.

 

“How did it go?” Mrs. Ladybug asked breathlessly.  

 

Mr. Grasshopper glared at her.  “Why, I just asked him, ‘coffee, tea, or me?’ and he requested the third option, obviously,” he said darkly, hurrying into his kitchen and hastily side-stepping Ms. Kluck.  “Buggy.  You must butt out.  I get along perfectly well with him on my own.  Your presence is making it rather difficult to communicate with him in a fashion that is not either appallingly rehearsed or uncomfortably stiff.”

 

Ms. Kluck took a little huffing breath and Mr. Grasshopper cut her a sharp look.  She covered her mouth with her hands.  She hesitated for a moment, and then said, in a laughing tone that clashed with her sheepish smile, “Shouldn’t be uncomfortably so, dear.”

 

Mr. Grasshopper thought seriously about attempting to give himself a concussion using his cabinet doors, but elected instead to ignore the stifled giggling of his unhelpful acquaintances and retrieve the coffee pot instead.  

 

“I’m sorry if I make you awkward, dearest,” Mrs. Ladybug said, sounding quite serious.  “I truly don’t mean to.  Only, well, dear, you know nothing shall happen if you don’t try.”

 

“We are not all blessed with the certainty that our advances will not be violently rebuffed,” Mr. Grasshopper said primly.

 

“Oh, he’d never, dear!” gasped Mrs. Ladybug, appalled.  “And if he did, why, when I was done, they’d never find the body!”

 

Mr. Grasshopper couldn’t help but smile.  “Honestly, Rosie,” he said, lowering his voice to show her how serious he was.  “You mustn’t pursue this any further.  Whatever shall happen, shall happen.  Promise me you won’t contrive awkward ways to throw me in his path anymore.”

 

Mrs. Ladybug nodded solemnly.  “I promise.”  

 

Mr. Grasshopper smiled at her, seeming to perk up a little himself.  “Ms. Kluck, I am aching for a cup of tea and one of those magnificent scones of yours.  Do you suppose we could eat now?” he asked, putting the coffee on to brew.

 

Mrs. Ladybug followed happily after her friends as they moved to Mr. Grashopper’s lovely dining room.  She’d have no trouble keeping that promise.  It would be more interesting to throw Mr. Centipede in Mr. Grasshopper’s way, anyhow.

 

\--

 

Ms. Spider chuckled softly as James ran ahead of her on the sidewalk and back again, obviously too antsy to contain himself.  “Settle down, James,” she said to her adoptive son.  “We’re almost there.”

 

“I’m just so excited!” James exclaimed, grinning brightly.  He had a smile that always melted his mother’s otherwise cool heart, and Ms. Spider smiled to see the child’s enthusiasm.  “I just see them so little during the school year!  Do you think Uncle Theodore will teach me a new song on his violin?”

 

“He always has before,” Ms. Spider murmured with a smile, carrying James’ suitcase with ease, the boy trotting along at her side.

 

“And do you think Aunt Rosie will let me try some of her peach wine?”

 

“She lets you try that?” Ms. Spider asked, a little surprised.  Oh well.  Children had to learn some time.  “Perhaps if you are good.”

 

James grinned broadly, before seeming to remember something.  “I shall miss you, though.  I’m happy to see them, but I wish you could stay.”

 

“I’ll be there in no time,” Ms. Spider promised him in a gentle voice.  “Certainly in time for the block party.  You’ll have fun with your aunt and uncle in the mean time, I promise.”

 

“I know,” James said, straightening up a little.  He cast a shy look at her.  “You will call every night, right?”

 

“Of course,” Ms. Spider smiled, placing her hand on the boy’s head as they turned the corner.  “No matter what.”

 

The rest of the walk was filled mostly with James’ voice, as he talked about all the things he’d like to do this first summer with his new family.  Miss Spider thought, not for the first time, how glad she was to have others to care for James--as much as she loved the boy, he certainly had a lot of fun to catch up on, and she was reticent by nature.

 

As they approached Mr. Grasshopper’s house, Miss Spider started slightly to see Mr. Centipede busily hacking away at Mr. Grasshopper’s lovely tall hedges.  She covered her mouth with her hand, uncertain how to interpret this--was this some kind of puerile step in one of their on-going arguments?  Their feuds had been infamous in the days when Mr. Grasshopper had still taught music down at the community center...but surely such quarrels did not deserve this kind of extensive personal retribution!

 

Fortunately, Mrs. Ladybug hurried out of Mr. Grasshopper’s house towards them.  As she did not stop to defend Mr. Grasshopper’s hedges despite the severe mutilation they were undergoing, Miss Spider was forced to conclude that an arrangement she was not privy to had been established.  It was terribly unfortunate, in her opinion; Mr. Grasshopper’s hedges had always lent his home an aura of mystery and seclusion that her own attic apartment could never reproduce.  

 

“James!” Mrs. Ladybug cried ecstatically, trotting down the steps as the little boy raced up to meet her halfway on the landing.  She wrapped her arms around the boy and squeezed him tight.  “Oh, we’re so happy to see you!  Look how tall you’ve gotten!”  Mrs. Ladybug looked up and spared a hand to wave at Miss Spider.  “Hello, dear, aren’t you looking lovely!”

 

Mr. Grasshopper emerged from his home and walked down all the steps, bypassing James to retrieve the suitcase from Miss Spider and offer her his arm.  “Hello, James,” he said, peering around to see the boy, crushed as he was against Mrs. Ladybug’s enthusiastic form.  “How do you do, dear boy?”

 

The boy at last emerged from Mrs. Ladybug’s arms, his face covered in red kisses, his mouth spread in a broad grin.  “Hello, Uncle Theodore!  Hello, Mr. Centipede--it’s a wonderful surprise to see you here!”

 

“Heya, kid,” Mr. Centipede said gruffly, scrubbing the body’s head affectionately with one big hand.  “How you doin’, boy?”

 

Miss Spider spared a glance to Mr. Centipede, who had stopped working and was leaning, hips cocked outward, against his shovel.  She felt her lips curl up in a slight smile.  “Monsieur,” she said in a low, somewhat smoky tone.

 

“Angelface,” he replied, popping his hat off the top of his head and waggling his eyebrows at her.  Miss Spider rolled her eyes, although her smile did not abate--short as their flirtation had been, she’d always had a bit of a soft-spot for him, complete and total moron that he was.  

 

Mr. Grasshopper’s arm tensed slightly and he cleared his throat.  “Well, you must be thirsty.  Do come inside--Mrs. Ladybug made lemonade precisely they way you like it, James.”

 

“All right!”

 

They trooped up the stairs and into the house, all except for Mr. Centipede, who turned back to his duties.

 

Unbeknownst to each other, Miss Spider and Mr. Grasshopper each glanced over their shoulders at the man below, their expressions revealing entirely different things.

 

\--

 

Mrs. Ladybug poured out a draught of lemonade and handed it to James.  “Be a dear,” she said, lowering her voice just enough that Mr. Grasshopper and Miss Spider wouldn’t hear her from the sitting room, “and take that out to Mr. Centipede for me, won’t you dear?”

 

“Okay,” James said, taking the frosty glass from her.

 

“Tell him it’s with Mr. Grasshopper’s compliments,” Mrs. Ladybug added.  “Thank you, dearie.”

 

Mrs. Ladybug was no fool.  Whether she was aware of it or not, Miss Spider had complicated matters.  Mrs. Ladybug liked Miss Spider very much, but this could not be borne.

 

It was time to get a little more proactive.

 


	5. Chapter 5

James spent the first few days of his summer vacation running back and forth across the street between Aunt Rosie’s and Uncle Theodore’s houses. 

As anticipated, the moment the door closed behind Miss Spider, Uncle Theodore gave James a few books full of violin solos to skim through and picked out records for the ones he thought he’d like to learn. James was still deciding, torn between some folksy fiddling tunes and the more somber classical pieces Uncle Theodore tended to favor. He spent the mornings listening to music and reading books and the afternoons watching Masterpiece Theatre with his uncle. 

Aunt Rosie kept an eye on him during the day and she would walk him down to the community center and play on the playground and visit Mr. Centipede, who was usually glad to take a break and spend time with James. Aunt Rosie fed him and took him to movies, museums, and the park when Uncle Theodore was working, often stopping for frozen yogurt on the way home. 

She’d made large, mouth-watering dinners every night so far, and would give James a little nip of whatever the adults drank at her dinner table. After supper, they’d all troupe back across the street so that Uncle Theodore and Aunt Rosie could sit in his garden and help James catch fireflies. Marian and Ms. Kluck had been over for a few of Aunt Rosie’s dinners, and James got to catch up with one of the few people within his generation who lived in Milton Heights. 

Miss Spider called him every night and they’d talk for a few minutes before James went to bed.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” she asked, in her low, gentle voice.

“Yes, very much,” he said. “How are you? Have you seen your family?”

He could hear her smile in her voice. “I have. My mother and sisters are all very well and they want to meet you. Ma mere has seen your picture and thinks you are a very handsome young man.” 

“Oh, you didn’t show her my school picture, did you?” James moaned. “I look so stupid in that picture!”

“You look like the handsome young man you are,” Miss Spider said firmly. “You always do.”

“Is France very nice?” James asked, hoping to get off the subject.

“Paris is as beautiful as I remember. I am taking lots of pictures to show you. I am about to have dinner with a friend I have not seen in years. He is the head chef of his own restaurant. On your next school break, I will bring you to Paris with me and introduce you.”

James smiled, tugging a little on the cord of the phone. “When will you be home?”

“Soon, James,” said Miss Spider. “That I promise. Now, I have to go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow night.”

He liked this arrangement perfectly well, staying in Uncle Theodore’s guest room and eating his meals at Aunt Rosie’s house, but as attentive as his adoptive aunt and uncle were to him, they still had their own daily duties and he couldn’t help but wish for a few friends to play with when they were busy.

So when he looked out Aunt Rosie’s window one morning to see Marian and Lady pulling up on Ms. Kluck’s motorcycle, he jumped at the chance to spend some time with them.

“Hello, James,” said Lady, unwinding her arms around Marian’s waist and carefully stepping down from the motorcycle, offering her hand to Marian to help her get off. “How was school? You’re quite taller now!”

James drew himself up to his full three and three-quarter foot height with a smile. “I am!”

“It must be Miss Spider’s cooking,” Marian said, smoothing down her skirt. “Do you think your aunt would mind if we took you along with us on our activity today?”

James grabbed Marian’s hand. “Let’s go ask her! I’m sure she wouldn’t mind--we don’t have anything going on until supper.”

Both girls had always been big hits with Aunt Rosie, who knew nothing about Marian’s mischievous streak nor Lady’s irrepressible curiosity. She cheerfully endorsed their excursion and bade them wait for her to make them a packet of sandwiches, no matter how much they protested that they’d eat on the way.

Armed with the superfluous sandwiches, the girls installed James in the sidecar and fitted a helmet upon his and their own heads. 

When they paused at a stop light on their way out of the city, James lifted his visor and shouted up at them. “What are we doing today?” Marian and Lady always had the best ideas. During Christmas break, the girls had taken him snow tubing one day. Later in the break, they spent an entire day building snow forts and using guerilla snowball warfare tactics in the streets.

Lady popped up her visor. “Uncle Trusty’s going to teach us how to shoot,” she said over the noise of the motorcycle. “But you mustn’t tell a soul. Not even Uncle Jock knows.”

Marian nodded, lifting her own screen. “Aunt Kluck would be horrified if I knew how to use a firearm. Peaceful protest and all that.”

“Not that she has a problem with your archery,” Lady observed. She turned her attention back to James. “Once we learn how to aim and fire, maybe we’ll all go out to a paintball range later in the month.”

James grinned, clicking his visor back down. Much as he loved his family, they’d never take him out for this kind of thing.

Well, except maybe Mr. Centipede. Maybe he’d ask him if he’d be on his paintball team.

\--

Trusty was no great fan of the Studebaker. As far as he was concerned, anything short of a Packard was no kind of real vehicle at all.

But Jock was devoted to the thing and no amount of protesting would induce him to sell it. Trusty missed the days when a simple command was enough to get his job done, but then again, he’d never had to work with anyone as hell-bent on his own way as Jock was.

Not that that was a bad thing, except of course when it came to cars.

Trusty leaned against the side of the old jalopy, waiting for Miss Lady. In his estimation, everyone should know how to handle a weapon, God forbid they’d ever needed to use it. He’d seen too many self-defense incidents go wrong, fumblers killing themselves or nearly, in his line of work. He was going to make very certain that such a thing would never have to happen to Lady. 

Jock disapproved, naturally. He still lived in a fantasy land completely removed from Trusty’s more world-weary reality, in which people were always willing to defend young women in the supremely unlikely event that anyone would dare to raise a hand against them. The fact that Jock could stay in that world didn’t make a lot of sense to Trusty, who knew for a fact that the ceremonial sword Jock kept above his fireplace had tasted blood while in his hand.

Not that this little lesson would serve a purely utilitarian purpose, either. He enjoyed spending time with his Miss Lady, to whom he’d grown very close and whose gentle manners and pretty looks and sly cunning reminded him of the fine, upstanding ladies he’d known as a young man. Any time he could share with her was golden, especially when it was the three of them all together.

He stood up a little straighter when the motorcycle roared up on the dry dirt path. Out here, away from the city and on the back forty of an old friend’s farm, they could learn in relative peace. Squinting, Trusty saw that the motorcycle was carrying at least one additional passenger. He’d expected Miss Marian to come along, but not young Mr. James. 

“Well, hello there,” he said. “You’ve shot up like an ear of corn, haven’t you, son?”

James was a nice young man, a little too kicked around by this world. It was only more evidence, as far as Trusty was concerned, that something was just plain wrong with people, if it was possible for them to mistreat a young boy like him. 

“We’re all excited,” Miss Lady said, tying back her wavy brown hair. “How do we start?”

Trusty opened the back seat of the car and pulled out a few heavy crates. “Now, we’re going to need these,” he said, pulling out his guns. He had a shotgun, an old-fashioned flintlock, and a rifle. “But if you don’t mind all that much, I do think I’ll hold onto them until you’re a little more learned on the subject.”

Miss Lady picked up one crate and struggled to peek into it. “It smells odd,” she said, curious.

“It contains a few cantaloupes past their sell-by date,” Trusty said, grinning a little. “And that one has a watermelon or two. Once you get good with the paper markers, we’ll go ahead and try something that reacts a little more.”

Miss Marian and Miss Lady exchanged breathless giggles and James helped Trusty carry ammunition and the markers. 

\--

“Now, just line up your sights real careful,” Uncle Trusty murmured. “Take it slow. Rather waste time than bullets.”

Lady nodded and replaced her bright orange earmuffs, squinting down the line of the flintlock. Trusty pulled the muff aside again.

“Remember, now,” he said, “it’s going to kick real hard, Miss Lady. You just hold on and stay where you are. Give her all the time she needs, don’t relax or it’ll buck like a demon. You pull that trigger and you don’t let go until it’s fired...nothing’s wrong with it.”

Lady nodded again and replaced her earmuff firmly. She squinted, focused hard, and pulled the trigger. An eternity stretched as she stood, waiting desperately for the bullet to erupt from the barrel of the gun. The flintlock was broken--it had to be--it was impossible that it should wait this long to fire--

Lady had almost begun to relax when the gun jerked in her grip, pressing deeply into the fleshy part of her underarm. If she’d relaxed, it would’ve slammed against it--as it was, the gun just shoved her back a step.

The watermelon exploded. 

“Wow,” said James and Marian together. 

Trusty patted Lady on the back, grinning. “That’s how you do it! Well done, Miss Lady ma’am--you’ve got the touch, sure enough!”

Lady preened happily. “Thank you. Marian, would you like a turn?”

“James should take a try with that monster,” Marian said. “I think it would knock me flat.”

Trusty looked at James with an evaluating gaze. “Well sir,” he said, guiding the boy to stand where Lady had been. “I warn you now that this will knock you over on your rump, but we’ve all got to take a few licks sometime.”

“Does it hurt?” the boy asked hesitantly.

“No,” Lady said. “It’s just surprising. Just do as you’re told and you’ll be fine.” 

Marian swept the gooey, red chunks of water melon off the stump they were using as a target and placed a cantaloupe carefully in its place.

Lady joined Marian behind the scratched line in the dirt--no one was to go past that line while the guns were loaded. Marian slipped her hand into Lady’s and Lady stood up a little straighter. 

“We’re going to go back to the motorcycle for a moment,” Lady said. “We’ll be right behind you.”

“Aren’t you going to watch my shot?” asked James, giving them a worried look. 

“Of course,” Marian smiled. “We’ll just be right there. Back in a moment.”

Pacified, James turned back to Trusty’s tutelage.

Marian and Lady walked hand-in-hand back to the motorcycle. Lady retrieved her pocketbook from the sidecar and rubbed a little more sunscreen on her face. “What’s going on?” she asked, dabbing a white glob on her bestfriend’s pinkening nose. 

The redhead smeared the sunscreen around a little. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to you much this morning,” Marian said. “I think I’ve found a thing or two about the Pongos. Do you think we could meet up tonight?”

“Just spend the night with me,” Lady said. “My house is still open enough...I’ve been staying there instead of living out of a suitcase at either of my uncles’ houses.”

“You’re telling me that you’ve had that whole house to yourself?” Marian asked, lifting her eyebrows. “I’m amazed that there haven’t been roaring parties!”

“It’s got my bed and my bathroom,” Lady said. “There’s not enough stuff for a party. That’s why I’m always over at Jock and Trusty’s.”

“A bed and a bathroom are all you need for a party,” Marian said sagely. “I’ll ask Aunt Kluck. I’m sure she won’t mind.”

The flintlock’s report popped through the air and the girls looked up in time to see James lying flat on his back on the ground. At first, Lady began to run toward him, worried, but the boy’s surprised laughter and Trusty’s low, warm chuckle reassured her, and she slowed enough to let Marian catch up to her.

\--

Mr. Grasshopper had nothing at all to do until rehearsal at two, so he decided that this would be a slow, peaceful morning. James had gone off with Lady and Marian at about eight o’clock--the roar of the motorcycle was unmistakable--and he thought to himself what joy there was to be had in a morning with only the company of tea pot, a record player, and the works of the greats.

Or that’s what he had been thinking when the phone rang.

Sighing now, Mr. Grasshopper rang off with Mrs. Ladybug, an indulgent, rueful smile on his mouth. He picked up his cup of tea and stepped out of doors, making himself comfortable on one of his porch chairs and settling in for another ‘examination.’

In the privacy of his thoughts, he called it Stud Watch, although it would take a very sophisticated and sadistic torture method to pry those words from his lips. Mrs. Ladybug had been grooming the parcel delivery man for weeks, and it was finally time for Mr. Grasshopper to evaluate him from afar.

In the early days of Mrs. Ladybug’s quest to form a collection of disposable men, Mr. Grasshopper had provided his own invaluable judgement on her prospective targets. He’d lived in the area long enough and tipped well enough at Christmas to know most of the postmen, paperboys, and deliverymen in the area. He knew--or could at least accurately guess--which were married, which were of a theatrical bent, and which were fair game. 

Times had changed a little, and with each new face in the neighborhood, he was called to do his duty as examiner. He didn’t mind so much, although it was all terribly silly and one of the greatest affronts to indecency that he’d come across. He was happy to be able to keep an eye on Mrs. Ladybug, for in her boundless enthusiasm she could grow thoughtless and incautious, and he wanted to be there to prevent anything untoward from happening.

The parcel man’s van drove up the street and the gentleman himself hopped out, whistling as he took a package to one of the houses on Mr. Grasshopper’s side of the street. Mr. Grasshopper took an approving sip of his tea. Completely amateurish, but a musical disposition was a nice thing to see. He was not very tall, but straight in each limb and quite muscular. His skin dark from hours in the sunshine and his uniform was of a sufficiently clean quality to show that he took pride in his appearance. He was clean-shaven and handsome, though Mr. Grasshopper didn’t personally see the appeal of the type.

Knowing himself spotted from the way the man glanced up at the row of townhouses, Mr. Grasshopper lifted his hand. “Good morning,” he said, watching the man smile and wave and continue about his business.

The next package was clearly Mrs. Ladybug’s. The man’s merry whistling jangled along as he hopped the curb and made for her house. Mr. Grasshopper lifted his eyebrows as he smoothed down his hair and rang the doorbell, knocking.

Mrs. Ladybug answered the door. Mr. Grasshopper was deeply relieved to see that she was in her ordinary clothing and not in her satin dressing gown. She smiled and simpered and took the package with a coy little gesture, signing her name slowly to chat as long as possible. When the transaction was over and Mrs. Ladybug closed the door, Mr. Grasshopper watched over the rim of his tea cup as the delivery man walked away, white teeth exposed in a grin, a spring in his step. 

The van drove away and Mr. Grasshopper finished his tea, waiting patiently. At last, Mrs. Ladybug popped her head around her door and looked at him. 

He gave her a thumbs-up and smiled as she perked up, grinning and fluffing her hair. Mr. Grasshopper raised his tea cup to her in a toast and went back inside. He had a sonata to listen to.

\--

Lady was no cook, but she had a mobile phone and a debit card. By the time she and Marian sat down to a few cartons of Indian takeaway and a bottle of red wine, she was feeling pretty good about the day. James had suffered none from his tumble and had thoroughly enjoyed his day out, which always put a bit of bounce in Lady’s step--she liked to be in the position of making others happy. As for herself, she had a bruise on her shoulder in the shape of the butt of the flintlock, but she knew how to prime, aim, and fire, and that was not to be sneered at. Marian had paid for her new knowledge dearly, for her nose was already peeling from sunburn and the top of her chest was pink.

Marian poured herself a second glass of wine with a slight smile. “Lovely,” she murmured. Lady smiled, enjoying the novelty of a real friend in her own home, without the spectre of Aunt Sarah to drive her off.

“You were going to tell me what you’d uncovered?” Lady asked, tracing a finger around her wineglass. Most of the dishes and glasses hadn’t been touched since her parents left and dusting everything had been a project. “I’m sure I haven’t been able to find a thing, but then I hardly ever do research on this sort of thing.”

Marian reached into her satchel and pulled out an old book of newspaper clippings. “Aunt Kluck has a fondness for old scandals and cover-ups,” she explained. “There are a few pictures of her in there. She looks so young, out protesting.”

Lady smiled and opened the book, turning the pages over slowly. “Hmm. But what does this have to do with anything?”

Marian got up and came around to flick through some of the heavy, large sheets of scrapbook paper. “That picture looked kind of familiar to me...I couldn’t pin down where I’d seen something like it before. Turned out that it was in here.”

She tapped her finger against the page above a picture of a pretty pair of young adults and several children. The woman and man held each other loosely, their spare hands gently pressing the children together in a cluster around them. There looked to be about ten children in all, with a few stray hand and tops of heads to indicate that there were more than were completely depicted.

“‘Mr. and Mrs. Pongo and 15 children,’” Lady read aloud. 

“Fifteen babies, can you imagine,” Marian said, shaking her head. “A dozen, certainly, that’s a little more reasonable, but fifteen...!”

Lady rolled her eyes and sipped her wine. “Your ambitions are so scanty, Marian,” she drawled. 

Marian pinched her neck lightly and turned the page again.

“‘Fifteen Pongo children missing,’” Lady read again, her brow furrowing. “‘Anyone with information about the children, please notify the police.’”

“And then, nothing,” Marian said, shaking her head. “That’s all, except for that picture of yours, which I suppose means that everything turned out all right in the end. But where they ever found 83 other children, I have no notion at all.”

Lady felt a quiver wrack up her spine, looking at the spiky lines of ink that formed the M in Missing. She took another sip of her wine. “Ghastly,” she said softly. 

Marian rubbed her back briskly. “It’s a starting place, anyway,” she said. “Maybe we can look into a it a bit more after we watch a movie.”

Lady gave Marian a tremulous smile. “We already know there’s been a happy ending, at least,” she said.

“Exactly,” Marian nodded.

\--

Dinner had been excellent. Jock was fond of cooking and Trusty was fond of eating, so even on the evenings when Miss Lady had other plans, they could put away a healthy meal between them. 

Jock was settled in his chair on the porch and was waiting for Trusty, who had agreed to do the dishes, to emerge. Hearing the former police detective creak slightly as he guided himself into the seat beside Jock for a post-prandial smoke, he blinked his eyes open and cast him a sidelong glance.

“Don’t you think I don’t know what you’ve been up to, you old hound,” he said darkly.

Trusty affected an exaggerated air of innocence. “Why, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he drawled. He pulled a pipe and a sachet of tobacco out of his vest pocket. 

Jock retrieved his a cigarette from his own shirt pocket, using it to point at Trusty. His own pipe was indoors and he did not much fancy the idea of getting up for it. “You scarpered right off this morning without a word of explanation and before I know it, Miss Lady and her friend are gone and you all come back smelling of gunpowder.”

Trusty tamped his pipe and lit it slowly, breathing out a silvery plume of smoke. That accomplished, he held out a lit match for Jock, who’d been fidgeting his cigarette between his fingers without making any headway. 

Jock held the cigarette to his lips and toasted it, giving Trusty an intense look at he did so. Trusty smiled sadly at him and waved out the match. 

“She ought to know how to do it,” Trusty said quietly, taking a slow drag on his pipe. 

“I don’t deny that,” Jock said, sighing. “And I don’t deny that you ought to be the one to teach her; no one better to do it, as far as I’m concerned.”

“But?” 

“But I don’t like you running about behind my back,” Jock said, his voice gruff. “Makes me twitch a bit.”

Trusty smiled slowly. “I do apologize, Jock,” he said. “I only thought you’d try to stop me.”

“Of course not,” Jock grumbled. “Just because I don’t approve doesn’t mean I don’t see that it’s got merit. But you know she’s only going to get curious, if she learns about what you know.”

Trusty clamped his pipe in his teeth and lifted his eyes, watching the evening sky turn dark. “Oh, I expect she will,” he agreed, sighing. “Miss Lady shouldn’t know about that kind of thing, Jock. It ain’t right to hear it.”

“I do suppose it does not make for the brightest story,” Jock admitted reluctantly. “But it’s nothing all so terrible, either.”

“Do you think that?” Trusty asked, giving him a closer look. “When you see what happened here? That little boy down the street and the hell those evil women put him through--”

“That story has a happy ending, Trusty,” Jock reminded him. “As did ours. I still hear about the children now and then, all of them old enough to be Lady’s parents.”

Trusty sighed deeply. 

“Nothing can change that: our story had a happy ending,” Jock repeated, mostly to himself. “For all parties concerned,” he added in an undertone.

Trusty perked up a little at that. Almost as an afterthought, he shifted his foot over so that his shoe nudged against Jock’s.

Jock smiled behind his cigarette and mustache and gently nudged back.


	6. Chapter 6

Vern Centipede was a simple kind of guy. 

He didn’t like frills. He didn’t like fuss. And even though he didn’t like being confused, he’d long ago resigned himself to it, because sometimes you just had to cut your losses. People could be weird in ways you didn’t even know were possible, and as far as he was concerned, it was in his best interests to just keep out of it.

He didn’t want anything big or complex or strange. Most of the time, what Vern wanted was some combination of a stogie, a square meal, and someone to share a mattress with. Sure, he loved the limelight, and maybe he was a sucker for an audience, but most of the time he was pretty relaxed about the world in general. 

That’s what had been so great about Tenebre Spider. Underneath her fancy clothes and her fancy language and her fancy books and her damn fancy name, she was a pretty normal gal. She knew what she wanted and she didn’t worry or waffle about going after it. It took a little while to get under her skin, yeah, and he’d be lying if he didn’t say that that challenge had been half the appeal. But once she got down to brass tacks, she was clear and direct. They had a good time and they parted when they were done, neither one the worse for it. It still gave him a little thrill whenever she walked by, but there were no strings left over.

Simple. Clean. Easy. Nothing but a little fun and no reason to have to pretend that it was more than that. That was the way he’d always tried to do it, and to be honest, he never saw why anyone would want to do things any other way.

But the world did take all sorts, didn’t it? Take Mr. Grasshopper, for instance. Mr. Grasshopper did things very differently. 

Mr. Grasshopper wasn’t much like any guy Vern had met before. He was uptight, prissy, and a smart-ass. He talked too much and for too long, he didn’t know how to loosen up, and Vern was halfway convinced that he’d been born grown. He got pissed over weird shit and had to be right all the time. He cared too much about pointless, piddly stuff and had this frustrating way of talking that only made him harder to understand the more he said. He was so rigid and proper all the time that Vern had a sneaking suspicion that the guy had never been laid in his life.

But, then again, he was pretty funny when he did that kinda sarcastic, self-aware holier-than-thou routine and he sure as hell held his own in any kind of fight. He hadn’t needed to give Vern a gig when he was fired, but he did and it turned out that he was a good guy to work for. He made some pretty incredible music, even Vern had to admit, and he obviously cared a whole hell of a lot about Mrs. Ladybug and the kid.

They got along pretty good, him and Mr. Grasshopper, although he’d be the first to say that they fought like devils when one of them did something to piss the other off. He’d never thought he’d be so tempted to take a swing at an old man, but Grasshopper could get under his skin like nobody else. But usually things were okay. Yeah, sometimes Vern leered at him and sometimes he’d say something dirty or kinda flirty just to watch the man fluster, but he couldn’t quite help himself...it was too damn hard to watch someone go around being all uptight all the time without wanting to yank their chain a little. Watching the guy blush was priceless!

Point was, Mr. Grasshopper was complex. Vern just liked things simple, so he didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. But there were some things that he couldn’t help but pick up on.

Vern didn’t want to cast no first stones, not when it came to a guy’s private life--what got somebody else off was none of his business, unless he was the one making it happen. He didn’t want to start looking funny at anybody else’s kink, lest they do the same unto him. 

But still. Vern had heard about guys who get hot watching their girls run around and cheat on them, but he never thought he’d actually meet one. For all that noise about ‘propriety’ and ‘decency’ he made...went to show that you never did really know anybody. Go fuckin’ figure.

It was pretty strange, to see how Mr. Grasshopper and Mrs. Ladybug went about their thing. Half the time, Vern was sure that they were stupid in love and as bland as white bread--all “my dear” this and “darling” that, and eating together and walking together and in and out of each other’s houses, and the fact that they actually danced together in Grasshopper’s living room. Vern figured that if they weren’t already married, it was only a matter of time until they would be, age be damned.

And then. There were the mornings when Vern’d be taking a smoke break and Mrs. Ladybug would be saying goodbye on her doorstep to whatever guy she’d just boinked. She’d send him off and then come racing across the street and up the stairs to visit Grasshopper, often meeting him on his porch and talking about how the postman was just “scrumptious, wasn’t he?” before Grasshopper got her inside. And then sometimes Grasshopper would come out on his front porch midday and look across the street to where Mrs. Ladybug was flirting with some new mark, and give her and thumbs up or a thumbs down, or make little encouraging gestures before going back in. 

Vern was mystified by it. But then, he liked things simple. Clear-cut. This was...strange.

But he liked them both well enough, and they took good care of the kid when he was over with them, so Vern figured that it wasn’t none of his business what they did in private.

Or so he’d thought until things started to get kind of strange.

It wasn’t so much of anything at first, really. Mr. Grasshopper might’ve been a little squirrellier around him than usual, but that could’ve been put down to just about anything. At first Vern thought the guy was trying to find a way to can him, but since time went by and he kept working and kept getting paid, Vern decided that that obviously wasn’t it. He thought maybe it was trouble in weird, kinky paradise, but Grasshopper and Mrs. Ladybug were even more attached at the hip than usual, even with the old biddy from down the street hanging around. 

Vern threw up his hands and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to try to figure it out. If Mr. Grasshopper wanted to be all strange and twitchy, that was his business.

But a little peace of mind was Vern’s, so when Mrs. Ladybug started threatening that, he got pretty on edge.

She was a nice old bird, no two ways about that. She was sweet and generous, and always had a smile for a person. Vern liked how she was a lot more down to earth and fun-loving than Mr. Grasshopper--just because he thought she was wild didn’t mean that he didn’t like someone who went right after what and who she wanted, and as many of them as she damn well pleased.

She started talking to him more when he was over working on Grasshopper’s garden, and since he was always happy to take a break, he let it drag out some. One morning she came up while the man of the house was upstairs playing something loud and complex and passionate (probably the only passion in his life). That was as good assurance that he wasn’t paying attention as any, so Vern slacked off a little to talk to Mrs. Ladybug.

“My goodness,” Mrs. Ladybug said, looking up at the window from which a pretty elaborate musical flourish had come. “But he does get absorbed in his music, doesn’t he?”

“Guess so,” Vern agreed. He had a faint memory of hearing Mr. Grasshopper play for the first time a year ago, while he’d been half-conscious in a lawnchair in the middle of the night. He hadn’t thought much of it, other than to be surprised that the old man was more than good with a violin. Vern kept his opinion of him now--when he wasn’t working with brats or trying to teach James not to screech a string, he made some pretty gorgeous music.

“He’s very auditory-minded,” Mrs. Ladybug continued. “Very sensitive ears, I think. And one would be quite wrong to say that he doesn’t make lovely sounds.” 

“Huh,” Vern said, lifting an eyebrow. 

“Do you like to sing, Mr. Centipede?” she asked. “Because I certainly do, and he does, as well, not that he does it nearly often enough for my tastes. Music has an effect on him like I don’t even know what. He hears something I just don’t--you should see some of the expressions he makes when he listens to Rachmaninov. It must be blissful. It’s very sensual for him, I think.”

Vern decided that it wasn’t quite on to try to imagine what those expressions were, but he puffed out a snicker anyway. “You don’t say. Well, takes all kinds,” he said, determined to stop this before it got any stranger. “Anyhow, I’d better get back to it or the old man’ll have my hide.”

“Oh, I’m sure he won’t, dear,” Mrs. Ladybug said hastily, walking up the steps. “He’ll be quite gentle, I have no doubt. It’s going to get hot today, so I’ll keep an eye on you to see that you stay hydrated.” 

She stopped at the door. “Oh, and I nearly forgot! If it gets warm enough that you need to take your shirt off, don’t hesitate to do so--we’re all very flexible about that sort of thing here.” And she disappeared into the house.

Vern pulled a weed out of the ground and tossed it into the yard trash bag. Okay, what was she doing? That was some of the most thinly-veiled innuendo he’d heard in a long time. If she was scoping him out for her next roll in the hay, not only was she barking up the wrong tree, but what was she thinking, talking so much about Grasshopper?

“What the fuck is even going on there?” he grumbled to himself. 

“Is something wrong?” 

Vern clutched his chest, certain he was going to have a heart attack. Turning around, he spotted James at the bottom of the steps. “Uh--nothing, kid. You didn’t hear me say that, yeah? Last thing I need is to be the one responsible for teaching you to swear. Maybe when you’re older.”

James gave him a mischievous smile. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t tell anyone. But is everything all right?”

Vern didn’t know how much the kid knew, but James was closer to the two of them than he was. “Uh, just curious,” Vern said, taking a moment to wipe the back of his neck with his handkerchief. “You, uh, know what’s going on with them? Or how long they’ve been together?”

“Together? You mean, married?” James asked, confused. “They’re not. They’re not even in love.”

Well. Vern was the first to agree that you didn’t need to be in love to have a go-on, but he would’ve bet cash money on the fact that they were ga-ga over each other. “No kidding?”

“That’s right,” James nodded. “I thought they were in love, too, but Mrs. Ladybug explained it to me. Mr. Grasshopper’s theatrical, so they are just friends.”

“Theatrical?” Vern echoed, lost. 

“Yes.” James frowned a little. “I don’t really know why being dramatic means that Mr. Grasshopper doesn’t want to marry a lady, but Mrs. Ladybug told me that Mr. Grasshopper likes Greek philosophy and musical theatre too much to fall in love with a woman.”

Vern sat there for a second, and when he realized what was going on, he just said, “Oh.”

James shrugged. “It’s kind of strange, I suppose. But that’s what’s happening.”

“Right,” Vern said. “Uh. Yeah. All right, thanks for clearing that up, kid. You need anything?”

James shook his head and trotted up the steps.

Vern couldn’t help but laugh a little as he got to his feet and headed around to the back yard. That made a hell of a lot more sense, now that he thought about it--Grasshopper was a pretty swishy guy, actually. He was only surprised that he hadn’t noticed it before. It was just that the old man was always so wrapped up with Mrs. Ladybug that he’d just assumed that the two of them were an item. But it totally fit, realizing that Grasshopper batted for his own team.

As far as Vern was concerned, the only people that got all bent out of shape about this kind of thing were the ones who were insecure about themselves to begin with. He’d messed around with enough different kinds of people to know what he liked and he didn’t bother feeling embarrassed about it--guys, dolls, whatever. He didn’t care...what was good was pretty much good no matter what. It didn’t bear all that much thinking about, most of the time.

But knowing that Grasshopper had no skin in the game did make the whole weird situation across the street so much more understandable. Hey, if that was what got you off, so be it, but it had always seemed just a little too out there for the old man.

Greek philosophy. Musical theatre. Jesus, that was Grasshopper all over--couldn’t just say “gay” when he could make some obscure reference to make things confusing instead. Crazy. 

He started fighting with the wisteria arbour and nearly sliced his own hand off with the shears as he finally realized what Mrs. Ladybug was up to. She was trying to set them up! It stunned another laugh out of him, the fact that she’d been so blatant this whole time and he’d only just realized.

If she was that aggressive about it with him, man, he didn’t even want to know how hell-bent on it she must be around Mr. Grasshopper. No wonder the old man had been so twitchy lately! He’d be twitchy, too, if she’d been trying to throw him at somebody every damn second--especially if it was someone he didn’t like as much as Grasshopper didn’t like him.

Vern didn’t have any illusions. They got along okay, and even their fights had a weird kind of satisfying ring to them, but he knew that Mr. Grasshopper couldn’t stand him. The feeling wasn’t exactly mutual--Vern actually kind of liked the old bastard, because he was a fighter and he had style, even if he was a son of a bitch sometimes. He’d pissed the old man off enough that he’d once taken a shot at him, and though he’d dodged Vern could tell from the way it flew that it had been a hell of a shot. He couldn’t help but respect that Grasshopper had a lot of oomph in him, even enough to get physical.

Ah, poor guy, getting set up was the pits. That’s what you get when you hang out with a busybody like Mrs. Ladybug all the time! Maybe Vern’d have some pity and try to head Mrs. Ladybug off at the pass.

...Or maybe he’d just see what the old girl tried next.

What could he say? He liked a little entertainment as much as the next guy.

\--

Mrs. Ladybug blew in the front door just as Mr. Grasshopper was putting the coda on the sonata he’d been playing. He swayed a little with the motion of his music, trusting her to be patient and quiet until he was done with his work. She settled herself into one of his armchairs and waited for him to finish.

He drew his bow across the strings with a pleasingly airy little warble and lifted the bow clean away, sighing as the last of the tone faded in the breeze from the windows. 

“Hello, my dear,” he said, carefully putting his personal violin away and taking a sip of his now-cold tea. “I hope you and James enjoyed your breakfast.”

“Oh, of course,” she replied, nodding. “He’ll be over in a few minutes, I expect. Do you know, I bumped into Mr. Centipede on my way up.”

“I’m sure you did,” Mr. Grasshopper murmured, “seeing as how I have employed him to tend my garden and that would suggest that he is on the premises with a certain regularity.”

Mrs. Ladybug smiled as he sipped his tea. “I mentioned that your backyard needs a good, solid plowing.”

Mr. Grasshopper felt himself choke and summoned up a supreme force of will to stifle instinct and swallow his tea. He was too supremely dignified to be reduced to performing a spit take in his own home. 

“Hopefully he’ll get on that right away,” Mrs. Ladybug said, all artful innocence.

Mr. Grasshopper was prevented from needing to reply by the arrival of James, who was very excited indeed to learn how to play Vivaldi’s Spring on the violin. Mr. Grasshopper gave Mrs. Ladybug a thunderous look as he flicked his coattails out of the way and sat at the piano. Mrs. Ladybug gave him a sweet, somewhat diabolical smile and pulled out her knitting as James nudged one of Mr. Grasshopper’s violin’s beneath his chin.

\--

Ms. Kluck laid out a map of the block that ran before the community center on her kitchen table and drew a circle around a small patch of land slightly off to the side of the playground. “Here is the brass ring, ladies,” she said. “And James,” she added.

Marian, Lady, Mrs. Ladybug, and James leaned forward to get a look at the map.

“What exactly makes it a brass ring?” Lady asked. The others sighed softly, glad that they did have to be the ones to ask.

“We are going to grab this patch of dirt and never let go,” Ms. Kluck said. “It’s the ideal spot! Perfect shade, easy access to every point on the street, ideal distance from every house in our little cadre. We must stake it out and be prepared to defend it from all comers while we wait for our brothers and sisters.”

“Our brothers and sisters?” Marian asked.

“Why yes, my dear,” Ms. Kluck said. “This is a memorial event! A reenactment of the Glorious People’s Republic of Milton Heights, established one scant year ago by our beloved brethren on the hottest days of the year. The finest artists and political animals of our time were there.”

“Last summer,” Marian said, not sure if she was hearing right. 

“Precisely,” Ms. Kluck said, very satisfied with her niece’s close attention to historical revolutions.

“It is a nice bit of lawn,” Mrs. Ladybug confirmed. 

“It shall be even nicer when night falls,” Ms. Kluck smiled.

“Night falls?” Lady asked.

“Why, we must have the vigil, my dear girl,” Ms. Kluck explained. “I don’t know if you were there for the nights last year, but your good uncles certainly were. The vigils were the most lovely part of the thing. A few brave, earnest souls standing up against the dark and the tyranny of an evil system. Music in the night, communal meals, impromptu dances...it was magnificent! We’ll find you some sheets and you and Marian can make a tent for yourselves.”

“Do you suppose we could have a bonfire?” James asked. He had been promised s’mores early in the week and was loathe to let them far from the forefront of his thoughts.

“Certainly,” Ms. Kluck said, with the self-assured conviction of those who do not think deeply or at length about the troubles that arise when crowds and fires mix. Mrs. Ladybug thought to herself that she must keep a close eye on that matter. A fire in Mr. Grasshopper’s fireplace might do much to staunch that enthusiasm.

“Now then,” Ms. Kluck said, looking at her kitchen clock. “In nearly--oh, blast, carry the one--96 hours, dawn shall break on the moment of action. I shall install myself the night before with my grill and Marian and Lady at my sides.”

Marian and Lady, who had not known that they were signed up for this level of involvement, exchanged a look.

“We shall weather the night and rise with the sun to stake out our position and have a lovely breakfast.”

“We shall probably be along around nine in the morning,” Mrs. Ladybug said. “What can we bring?”

Ms. Kluck tapped her finger against her chin. “Pasta salad, I should think,” she said at last. “And a bit of that lovely wine of yours, Buggy. In vino, veritas and all that.”

“Remember, Mr. Grasshopper and I are vegetarians,” Mrs. Ladybug said. “It wouldn’t do to have only meat around.”

“We’ll get veggie burgers,” Lady volunteered, even as her stomach turned at the thought of them. She was carnivorous to her core and was, personally, quite excited about a thick, red hamburger. “And something to snack on.”

“It’s pot luck, as my fellow revoluntaries shall recall,” Ms. Kluck said. “So we shall be sharing the bounty of our own goods with those of our neighbors. If Duchess O’Malley makes those delectable canapes again, we shall be the happiest of people.”

“Wouldn’t the conception of property rights as implied by our careful land-snatch tend to contradict our distinctly socialist revolutionary fervor?” Marian finally asked. “Auntie,” she added, not wanting to be rude.

“Oh, what nonsense,” Ms. Kluck puffed. “Of course not, Marian. Share and share alike, certainly, but let’s not go overboard.”

Marian smiled at Lady, who pinched her hip and looked away, trying not to laugh herself.

“Is there anything I can do?” asked James.

“Indeed there is,” Ms. Kluck said, opening one of her cabinets. “In fact, I need you to do possibly the most important job of all.”

She took out an old-fashioned Polaroid camera. “Photojournalism,” she said, giving James the camera. “The immortal record of the unprejudiced lens.”

James looked distinctly like he was about to start vibrating with excitement.

“I want you to record all that goes on during the party,” Ms. Kluck said, “so that we might reflect upon our first annual commemorative event and improve next year. Take the meantime to get acquainted with the camera.”

James turned it turns Mrs. Ladybug, Lady, and Marian and snapped a picture. He shook the Polaroid print rapidly, hurrying along its development and revealing a somewhat cockeyed product. “Cool,” he breathed, obviously pleased.

Tasks thus assigned, Ms. Kluck saw Mrs. Ladybug and James off with an entreaty that they pin Mr. Grasshopper down on the subject of music. “Nothing too patriotic,” Ms. Kluck said. “Perhaps something rebellious.”

Lady was interrupted from the contemplation of what, exactly, constituted rebellious violin when Marian grabbed her hand. “Come on,” she said in an undertone, “we need to find a camera we can disguise, just in case every picture James takes comes out diagonal.”

“I kind of like it,” Lady said. “It’s quite artistic.”

“I like it, too. But he’s less than four feet tall,” Marian pointed out. “The close-ups will be of people’s stomachs--or possibly Mr. Grasshopper’s knees,” she laughed. “We ought to have some little backup, just in case.”

“Good point,” Lady agreed, and the girls disappeared upstairs.


	7. Chapter 7

He could trace it back to the very moment the trouble really started. If he could do these several months all over again, Mr. Grasshopper would never have let a few fatal words escape his lips.

She’d only asked him what she thought of his gardener. In retrospect, he knew she must’ve been thinking about hiring Mr. Centipede for her own yard, but at the moment, he’d answered from a personal perspective.

“Mr. Centipede? Why, I esteem him very highly,” he’d said, meaning it from the bottom of his heart. With that he sealed his fate. To anyone else, it would’ve been a bland compliment at best, or damning with faint praise at worst. To Mrs. Ladybug, who knew him like the back of her hand and had long grown accustomed to his habit of casual understatement, this was a veritable ecstasy of effusive praise. Knowing this, she decided that it was up to her to make his esteem known for what it was.

Why she decided this, Mr. Grasshopper did not fully understand, but he suspected that it was out of some kind but misbegotten idea of hers that identified him, however correctly, as lonely. He was wrong to show his interest in the first place, he would admit, but he could not deny that despite a new and wonderful family situation, he had spent many, many years alone and could not help but have the occasional absurd wish.

Mrs. Ladybug meant no harm, but the road to hell was paved with good intentions and he was certainly sliding towards the Seventh Circle with all possible speed. He wanted to keep his temper and ignore her behavior until she tired of her lack of success and all parties went back to their happy, unconcerned natural state. He should have been able to handle it, of course, had handled much more frustrating problems in his day without the slightest ripple in the placid pool of his sang-froid.

But something about the combination of these two people, both of whom could touch him to his core without the slightest effort, made him edgy and desperate.

A few days before the Block Party, he stood in his living room, enjoying a brief respite from both lessons and the looming threat of rehearsal and was finalizing his own portion of the musical program for the upcoming Saturday. He was moving through the violin portion of a Boccherini piece and happened to glance out the window.

He’d asked Mr. Centipede to be so good as to take a little while to make sure that his garden was in as good condition as was possible in the few days before the party. His gardener had been good enough to oblige and was even now out on the front yard, pulling a few stray weeds and trimming the lavender edging that Mr. Grasshopper had planted years ago in a fit of pawky humor.

The work could not take long and the day was not very hot.

There was no cause for Mr. Centipede to be chatting with Mrs. Ladybug, their faces curled in nearly identical mischievous smiles as the man stripped out of his shirt.

Mr. Grasshopper’s bow screeched across his strings as his stomach plummeted towards his shoes. He watched, oddly detached, as their heads turned to look at the window from whence the unpleasant sound had come, and it was Mrs. Ladybug’s quick wink in his direction that was the final straw.

Odd, how a gesture of friendship could rouse one’s temper, he thought, some cool, rational part of his mind high and away on matters that did not pertain to his body. His body put the violin down and walked swiftly to his front door. He opened it, walked down his stairs, and touched Mrs. Ladybug gently on her elbow.

“May I speak to you,” he asked, eyes fixed firmly on her, his expression empty of suggestion. Mrs. Ladybug’s smile faltered and she returned the touch, taking his arm.

“Of course, my dear,” she said, beginning to move towards his stairs.

“No,” he said. “I think not. Pardon us,” he said, not sparing Mr. Centipede a glance. He placed a hand at the small of her back and guided her across the street and into her own house.

Mrs. Ladybug turned to face him when the door closed, her eyes bright with concern. “Is something the matter, dearest?” she asked.

“What were you talking about?” he replied, heart and lungs tight in his chest.

A smaller, cheeky smile appeared on her mouth. “The weather, darling,” she replied. “How hot it always seems to be around your house. Must be the occupant.”

She was putting him up to this. How could she not realize that this was mockery? A joke they surely thought harmless but could not but be cruel to one who had not revealed the extent to which he was vulnerable to them. Mr. Grasshopper didn’t feel rage so much as he felt a cold, hard hurt. 

“Rosalind,” he said, pronouncing her name with his back teeth trying to clamp down on the vowels. “Stop.”

Mrs. Ladybug startled, her smile disappearing and her expression immediately registering concern. “Dear?”

“Stop,” he repeated. “You may not mean it but your actions are humiliating me beyond my capacity to remain calm,” he said, clasping his hands to keep them from shaking with frustration. “If you do not cease this juvenile behavior, I shall have to take drastic steps.”

“Theodore, darling, I--”

“Do not return to my house today, Rosalind. I cannot--I am growing angry and I do not wish to exacerbate the issue,” he said tightly, running his hands through his hair in an attempt to smooth it. “James shall come and go as he pleases, I expect. But I...I need to calm down.”

Mrs. Ladybug reached towards him. “Oh, but Theodore, I never meant--”

“I had thought you would be kinder,” he said coldly. “That you would choose the lesser of two evils. I had thought you would be more willing to let me remain alone than to publicly humiliate me.”

She stepped back, struck, and Mr. Grasshopper hastily took his leave, walking back across the street with a stiff back and a rapid gait. Once on the steps, he stopped and looked at Mr. Centipede, who had been looking across the street with shameless curiosity.

Mr. Grasshopper stared at the man for a moment, torn between his own mortification and a despairing fury. “I apologize,” he said in a voice that clung to some semblance of control, “for any inconvenience or unpleasantness we may have caused you.”

Mr. Centipede opened his mouth to reply, but Mr. Grasshopper was already up the stairs and away before he could even call out. He closed the window of his living room and drew the curtains. With trembling hands, he picked up his violin, shaking slightly as he sought to finish the Boccherini. The Grand Caprice came out instead.

When it was over, he sat down on his sofa and did not move for a long while.

\--

After their conversation on the porch, two more days went by before Jock decided that it was time to take things into his own hands.

He thought he understood why Trusty was so determined to avoid the matter. Jock knew first-hand what kind of steel was under the man’s kindly, old-fashioned personality. He remembered the strapping young investigator, who’d been all fire and vigor and an ardent determination to protect and serve. 

That young man was alive in Trusty--sometimes Jock was sure he was right behind Trusty’s dark eyes, waiting to leap out and collar some wrongdoer--but time had slowed him down sufficiently that he was more or less content to live quietly with a few close friends.

He never had put the past behind him, however, until Lady had come into their lives.

Little Lady, who only spoke French for the first few months they’d known her, had blossomed into a beautiful, kind-hearted, curious young woman--no little credit due to their influence, Jock liked to think. She was bright and young and full of hope and good will for the world. 

The change in Trusty had been astonishing. He had always been a sweet man, almost unusually so, given his calling, but he was never so gentle or so happy than when he was with Lady. He incessantly told stories about his grandfather and doted on the girl, seeming to have an innate sense of what was the right thing to say and do whenever she had a problem.

Now grown, Lady had no notion of the things Trusty had seen and done in the pursuit of his duty. She had an idea of his profession, but Jock knew it would be hard to unite the gentle, fond man she knew with the fiery investigator Jock had met all those years ago.

And why should Trusty want to tell the girl how they’d met? Or tell her any details about his career? It was a ghastly story, one that could not but serve to remind him of old horrors best left behind. Why hurl himself back in time and face it all again, when he could just live in the present, where there was comfort and friendship and security?

Jock knew he had to take it upon himself.

Lady sat down in the living room with a glass of iced tea and watched, half-lidded and pleasantly full of lunch, as he lit his pipe. The girl looked like she was about to take a nap right then and there, and Jock decided that it was time to clear the air.

“You’ve seen that photograph before,” he began. “The long one with the couple and the several dozen bairns?”

Lady sat up straight. “Of course I have,” she said. “I notice it every time I come in.”

Jock blew out a stream of smoke. “It’s about time I told you how I met Trusty,” he said quietly.

_Jock knew Trusty’s name long before he ever met the man face to face, and they’d corresponded for some years before even that. At the time, it had been the established practice of their various agencies to communicate and even cooperate, but Jock and Trusty fell into a rather unusual rhythm of collaboration whose frequency and success seemed almost providential. MI6 and the FBI had their differences, but Jock and Trusty seemed remarkably suited to each other._

_Jock kept an eye on the money side of things. Financial fraud of any kind, identity theft, even plain robbery was where he kept his eye. He could follow a money trail until its conclusion nearly without fail, however faint and scattered the trail might go. From his desk in a posh office in London, he could chase a single transaction from the 1940s, conducting in Beijing, all the way to a drug cartel in Argentina forty years later. He knew where money went, and when something looked suspicious about a kept book and lives were on the line, he was the man they gave it to._

_Trusty was a hands-on sort of man. He’d wanted to be a police officer since he could walk, and he’d been content enough to work up the ranks and grow to handle more international matters. Trusty would put his head down and work at his problem until he was half-dead, closing a case only when he had his jaws clamped around the trouble’s throat. Like as not, he came home with swamp mud stuck in his boots and the exhausted, not unsatisfying sense that though he’d put paid to someone’s trouble, tomorrow would bring him a new quarry._

_They weren’t always successful, of course--no one could be. They had their share of sleepless nights and hellishly panicked days that only ended in useless suffering._

_But they did it because someone had to know where the money went and what evil it was doing, and someone had to go out there and bring back whoever was doing evil with it._

_To Jock, Trusty was a spectre, a faceless agent of unstoppable willpower. Jock would send him some information, explain some trail of evidence, and Trusty would report back with information about his new captive that filled in the gaps in Jock’s narrative, the living and incarnate heir to the story Jock had uncovered in dead and musty books and records. They communicated exclusively through written documents, and Jock shaped a complex image of the man in the strength of the tall, broad T’s and the soft quaintness of his given name as it appeared in his signatures. They wrote their reports together, and in the rough drafts Jock could see the fierce life of the man woven into his words, from the way he described making his arrests to the far-too florid accounts of the crimes or the perpetrators. Jock could feel how he cared, and smiled at it even as he edited the evidence of it away._

_To Trusty, Jock was a eye in the sky, or possibly under the earth. Trusty could almost feel the dirt under his nails as he read Jock’s accounts of how he dug through time and space to pick out little threads, little fibers of the life of the world and recreated the rope that a man had made to hang himself. In the careful, almost pedantically neat reports that he received from Jock, Trusty imagined him bookish, possibly compulsive, and devastatingly efficient for all his seeming slowness--a sharp little punch of a man, there and gone like the rapid pop of his name in the back of Trusty’s throat._

_These half-conceived notions of each other might have been the extent of their experience if it had not been for the Pongo case._

_The Pongo case, Jock would argue, actually took its roots around the time of the Hundred Years’ War and the supposed immigration of the daughter of Gilles de Rais to Suffolk under an assumed name. Trusty thought that was something of a stretch, but that was went Hell Hall had first been built, and he had to admit that there were some uncomfortable connections between the Original Bluebeard and the direction the house’s history would take._

_In any event, the money of the family dwindled over the long years and by the time it came into the sights of Jock and Trusty, it was remarkable that the place was still standing, even in its dilapidated condition. It had been an evil place, the likes of which had been shunned by the people in the country for many, many years._

_Which was why it was so astonishing to see so much commerce happening in the name of the house. Two brutish louts came down from the house and spent an uncommonly large amount of money in town on food and provisions, much too much for their own ability to consume. Townspeople claimed that they sometimes saw children in the windows of the old mansion, though their small and pale faces more precisely resembled death masks than living beings. This was particularly a poignant subject, for the country was in the grip of anxiety over a terribly bizarre kidnapping case. Mr. and Mrs. Pongo were somewhat famous, both for their vast fortune and their unusual household of fifteen children. Every last child had gone missing in the past weeks and the country was riveted by news of man hunts and tearful entreaties to spread the news and report whatever was known about any stray children._

_Working during his lunch break one day, Jock took an idle look at the Hell Hall story as much for entertainment as for amused interest in the ghostly happenings. The detail of the men caught his eye and he half-heartedly checked it against an old failure of his and Trusty’s regarding a pair of kidnappers operating in the Louisiana swamps who’d escaped Trusty’s most ardent efforts._

_When the saw how the accounts of the men overlapped so cleanly and exactly, Jock notified his supervisor. This would be very, very important. Then he notified Trusty, who deserved to know that a line on their old enemies had been discovered._

_To Jock’s surprise, his office notified their American counterparts and Trusty requested immediate clearance to come and oversee the investigation. Jock well remembered the man’s riveting account of his pursuit of the villains through the bayou and the several shots that had been traded between them. He supposed that if anyone knew what they were up against with these two men, it was Trusty._

_They met for only a few instants in Jock’s office before Trusty hurried into the car that would take him and a team out to Suffolk to investigate. Jock was astonished by how spot-on his idea of Trusty had been, even as the man was surely transformed by jetlag; tall and broad in the shoulders, with a certain tragedy in the droop of his mustache and the slump of his back. He kept his kindness in his mouth and in his hands, with his small and sad smile and the gentility of his peculiarly, euphonically accented voice, and the warmth of his handshake._

_Trusty, on the other hand, had not expected Jock to be quite so small, quick, and friendly--there was a bustling, bright life in the man that he’d faintly suspected by never really substantiated. The little man’s open smile and Scottish brogue surprised and pleased him._

_They shook hands, commented on how nice it was to finally meet each other, and then parted ways--Trusty off to the hunt, Jock back to his desk._

_Several hours passed. Jock kept an ear out for the news from Suffolk, but there was little enough coming in._

_At last, he got a phone call from Trusty._

_“Good evening, sir,” the man said, in a voice that sounded like it had been beaten bloody. “I apologize to call you while you are surely preparing to leave, but I had hoped that you might tell me where I could get a bite to eat.”_

_“Are you all right?” Jock asked, concerned by the way the man sounded. “How is everything?”_

_“Perhaps I could tell you over supper, sir,” Trusty replied. “I have been cleared of any medical concern and I have not eaten in some while.”_

_“Of course,” Jock said. “Of course, then. Where can I meet you?”_

_“I’m in the payphone outside your office, sir. I look forward to seeing you again.”_

_Jock grabbed his briefcase and jacket and tumbled out of his office building, spying the tall figure across the street instantly. Trusty looked exhausted, his sad eyes deeper and darker than Jock remembered, his arm in a sling._

_Looking at the man’s shoes, Jock could see that they were stained with some dark fluid he didn’t really want to identify._

_“What happened?” Jock asked, hopping onto the sidewalk and coming to stand close to Trusty._

_“You haven’t heard, sir? I thought they’d tell you for certain.” Trusty shifted his weight and began to walk beside Jock at a slow, loping pace. “They were there, sir, and now they are not there anymore.”_

_From anyone else, Jock was certain that the sentence would’ve sounded boastful. But Trusty said it with such a crushing sadness that he couldn’t help but feel that there was something horrible about the story, waiting to come out._

_They popped into a pub Jock occasionally visited and had supper. In a low and heartbroken tone, Trusty traced a faint sketch of the day’s events--the long road to the house, the crumbling edifice, a Colonel and his men prepared to go in, the inside, the kidnappers, bullets exchanged, men wounded, children, an impossible number of children held hostage, blood on the floor when the day was done. The Pongo children, their parents, and eighty-four others for whom there was no record. They weren’t even sure what the endgame had been for the kidnappers, or who they’d been working for, for the house was surely not theirs._

_Jock listened with a heart turned to icy red slush in his chest. Trusty told him only the faintest elements of the thing and it was enough to make him feel the need to retch. His exposure to the horrors of their business had been through the eyes of others. He couldn’t imagine what it must’ve been like to see it first hand._

_They left when the pub closed, and Jock turned to Trusty, sick at heart to think of the American going and trying to sleep in the dark emptiness of a sterile hotel room with only his ghastly thoughts for company. He thought of himself, lying in bed in his bachelor home and thinking of what he knew, what could’ve been if he’d spent his luncheon differently._

_“Perhaps I could offer you a nightcap?” Jock asked._

_Trusty paused in the action of pulling a cigarette out of a pack. He looked at the little man and made a gesture with his mouth that was not so much a smile as the indication that one might someday appear there again. “I would appreciate that very much, sir,” he said. He offered Jock a cigarette and they lit up. As they smoked, Jock led the way and Trusty followed him home._

_In the morning, Jock got fuller details from his superiors, but they did not expand much on Trusty’s account, aside from the news that the Pongos intended to foster all of the children. The astonishing thought of that one family, bogglingly wealthy as they were, caring for 99 children threatened to send him into hysterics. Shock and despair were not yet ready to give way to relief._

_Trusty stayed in England another four days to wrap things up and try to rest a little. He cancelled his hotel reservation and stayed with Jock for the while, and when he left, it was with the earnest insistence that Jock consider a visit to America to spend some time in Trusty’s home._

“If we could get assignments overseas, we’d try to meet up...took some vacations together. Spent a week in Scotland, once. I visited America thrice to see him and he met me in England on a few occasions,” Jock said. “By the time I retired, I knew I wanted to move out here. And since he was ready to pull his pension, I talked him into it. A few years after we settled down, you arrived.”

Lady sat on the sofa, feeling cold and sad. “Why doesn’t he want to tell me?” she asked. “He’s nothing less than a hero. You are, too.”

Jock smiled sadly. “Thank you, lass. But he wants to leave it behind, my dear--it and a hundred stories like it have tried to eat up his heart. He just wants to enjoy the rest with the two of us.”

Lady sat and trembled a little. Jock got to his feet and sat beside her on the sofa, wrapping an arm around her. 

She curled into his chest and hugged him back. “I’m glad I know,” she said. “I know how you met now, and you met because you were both good, wonderful people.”

Jock smiled and kissed the top of her head.

\--

“Oh my God,” said Marian, her arms wrapped around Lady’s waist and chest against her back.

“I know,” Lady replied, leaning her head back on Marian’s shoulder as the other young woman swayed slowly. “Isn’t it astonishing?”

“They were spies?”

“Oh, Marian, have a little focus!” Lady cried.

“Yes, of course, I’m sorry,” Marian said, shaking her head and twirling Lady with a deft twist of her fingers. “It’s an incredible story, and good heavens, it’s even terrifying, but it’s...I’m sorry, but I just can’t imagine it.”

“You mustn’t tell a soul,” Lady said, letting her friend twist her body this way and that as they went through their dance steps. She kicked up a leg and smiled at Marian caught it, dipping her deeply to the floor. “I don’t want the neighborhood getting all excited. Least of all your aunt.”

“Oh, can you imagine?” Marian laughed, despite herself. “‘Spies?’” she asked, in a remarkably good impersonation of her aunt. “‘Spies, in my neighborhood? Living here all these years, getting dirt on the Resistance?’”

Lady giggled, quickstepping in time with Marian’s rapid, strong movements. “You’re trying to deflate the situation!”

“Nothing of the sort,” Marian replied, catching Lady and pulling her close, hugging her. “It’s just...I don’t know what to say, really. It’s so long ago, and now they’re so calm and quiet...the only ones on the street I’d really call ‘retired,’ you know? And I suppose I just don’t know what to say.”

Lady nodded, wrapping her arms around Marian, too.

“Now what will you do?” Marian asked. “Finding that out was sort of your summer project, wasn’t it?”

Lady shrugged. “I suppose I’ll enjoy the rest of my summer,” she said. “Maybe I’ll get a job. Or help out down at the community center or the library.”

Marian smiled. “Good ideas.”

“Mostly, I’d like to just spend it with you,” Lady said. 

Marian kissed her friend’s cheek and held her tighter. “That can definitely be arranged,” she said.

\--

“Well,” Trusty said. “Who’s the sneaky old hound now?”

Jock looked up from his newspaper with an expression of surprise. He was in the habit of reading in the afternoon in Trusty’s sitting room, but he’d thought the man would be outside having his post-lunch nap. “I have no idea what you’re on about, laddie,” he said, lifting his chin.

Trusty gave him a dry smile. “Oh, now don’t you try that with me, boy,” he said, walking towards the man on his sofa and pointing a finger at him. “Miss Lady just came up and hugged me and told me I was heroic. Where do you think she got a foolish idea like that?”

“The truth is never foolish,” Jock sniffed. He rose on the cushion as Trusty sat down heavily beside him. “I only told her as much of the matter as I thought prudent and fair.”

“Did you now?” Trusty asked, lifting an eyebrow. “And I suppose you made sure to talk up how it would never have happened if you hadn’t been going above and beyond your call?”

Jock wiggled his head a little. “Perhaps I dwelt a little more on the actual action of the thing,” he said.

Trusty grumbled. “You always did like my part more,” he said, leaning back. “I don’t understand it. Never would’ve gotten them out if it hadn’t been for someone to take a look into the old place.”

“What I do is so boring to hear about,” Jock said. “It certainly doesn’t make for an interesting story. You, with your guns blazing and your man-of-action routine...you were one of the ones that actually saved people. I sat at my desk and read dodgy invoices.”

Trusty rolled his eyes. “Jock, you don’t even know when you’re good for something,” he said, slinging an arm across the back of the sofa. “You saved them just as much as we did--more--and I will tell Miss Lady that she missed one hero because he’s an old fool.”

Jock clicked his tongue and opened his paper again.

“Now, did you happen to tell her about me staying over with you those days?” Trusty asked, giving Jock a rather sly look.

“Of course I did! I’d not have retired with you if we’d only had the one meal together. I had to give a little context, laddie.”

Trusty smiled under his mustache. “Let Miss Lady draw her own conclusions?”

Jock turned the page. “Lady knows when deeper inquiry can avail her no further.”

Trusty laughed and squeezed his arm lightly around Jock’s shoulders.

\--

Evening came and a night passed. When Mr. Grasshopper woke up the next morning, he felt a little better, the wound of humiliation beginning to heal as time placed distance from the crucial and ugly moment.

He bathed, shaved with a straight razor, put on a fresh suit, and made tea. He drank it, did the crossword puzzle, and walked over to Mrs. Ladybug’s house with James.

When she opened the door, she looked close to tears. 

“Pardon me, James,” Mr. Grasshopper said. “But could we have a moment alone?”

“Can I walk down to Lady’s house?” the little boy asked.

“Certainly,” Mr. Grasshopper said.

When the boy was a little way down the road, Mr. Grasshopper turned to look at Mrs. Ladybug. Her lips were trembling and she obviously held herself rooted to the spot, not wanting to make any move toward him until he allowed it.

Mr. Grasshopper smiled slowly and wrapped his arms around her, letting out a little grunt as she returned the gesture and squeezed him so tightly, her grip threatened to rearrange his organs. 

“I’m so terribly sorry, my love,” she said softly. “You’re absolutely right. I’ve been horrid...just thoughtless. I should have been better to you...I didn’t realize I was doing such harm!”

Mr. Grasshopper patted her back. 

“I never mean to hurt you, dear, but I should’ve thought a little more before I started this. A woman my age should know better than to matchmake.”

“I do not make my wishes known easily,” Mr. Grasshopper said. “If I had been more direct, we should not have reached this point. Mea culpa.”

“Mea maxima culpa,” Mrs. Ladybug replied. She let him go and looked him up and down. “Have you eaten anything since I saw you?”

Mr. Grasshopper thought. “I definitely had a cup of tea,” he said in a thoughtful voice. 

“Come inside and I’ll make some breakfast,” Mrs. Ladybug said. 

Mr. Grasshopper followed her in with a small sigh of relief. There. That was better.


	8. Chapter 8

The sun rose high and bright on Milton Heights on the morning of the Block Part, though in the opinions of some, rather too early. 

Marian dragged herself out of the tent with a groan. She hated camping.

Mrs. Kluck was up and doing a sun salutation on the grass, bright and chipper despite the rocky bed she must’ve slept on. “There you are, dear!” she said, seeing her niece feebly clawing her way out of the cloth shelter. “I thought you’d sleep all day!”

Marian fumbled for her mobile and checked the time. “It’s six thirty,” she said. 

“Oh, my, yes,” said her aunt and Marian held back a whine. “Do take a look at Lady, won’t you dear? I fear she might not be getting into the spirit of things.”

Marian shuffled over to take a look at the sleeping woman. “Lady?”

Lady curled tighter on herself. “No,” she moaned softly, a heart-rending little whimper of a noise.

Marian sighed and stumbled out of the tent. This was absurd. Who camped on public ground in the middle of a city? “I’m going to walk up and take a shower,” she said. “Would you like me to bring anything?” 

Mrs. Kluck hummed thoughtfully from downward dog. “Just the large tea kettle, my dear. I’m sure a little campfire would be just the thing!”

As she scrubbed her hair clean under the shower head, Marian decided that her task for the day was to try and prevent her beloved aunt from getting arrested.

\--

By the time Mrs. Ladybug’s contingent appeared, the neighbors were already out and mingling. Many dozens of Ms. Kluck’s friends and acquaintances made up the crowd, which was even now setting up tables and even canopies, face painting and handmade musical instruments and artwork abundant at every turn.

Mr. Rabbit and Mr. Tigger from down the street were chatting with Mr. Jock and Mr. Trusty, likely on the subject of gardens, as with bright joie de vivre, Madame La Grande Bouche, a glamorous magazine editor, danced through the crowd, greeting all and sundry and obviously delighted to see her neighbors. Through it all Duchess Bonfamille swanned beautifully, her children following her like wayward ducklings. James snapped a photo of them and developed it quickly before sticking it in the pouch Uncle Theodore had given him to hold his work.

The pouch had become very full in the past few days, as James tried out the camera. There were more than a dozen pictures of Uncle Theodore and Aunt Rosie: some of his Uncle sitting alone in his dark living room, some of Aunt Rosie reapplying her makeup, and many of them having happy dinners together, and of Uncle Theodore playing and Aunt Rosie knitting. There were pictures of Mr. Centipede scowling at traffic and pictures of Ms. Kluck setting up her tent. There were pictures of Lady and Marian trying out a new dance and pictures of the way the street looked when night was falling.

There were even a few awkward self-portraits which James rather liked, especially the one that was just a close up of his eye. He wasn’t bad at this. Perhaps he’d ask Miss Spider for a camera for Christmas.

As soon as he thought of her, he spotted her in the crowd. James hared off toward her despite Uncle Thedore’s startled cry and tightly hugged her almost before she saw him.

“Well, hello,” she said, laughing. “I do believe you caused a scene, James,” she said, leaning down to kiss his forehead and waving to Uncle Theodore and Aunt Rosie. 

“Hello,” he said. “I missed you!” 

He released her and pointed the camera at her, taking a picture of her surprised expression. He flopped it back and forth hastily, grinning as it came out. “There. Now I’ve got a reminder.”

Miss Spider put her hand on her son’s head and smiled, steering him back towards the other members of his family. 

\--

Vern had flicked on his TV while making coffee this morning and had caught a news broadcast of what was happening down in the neighborhood. Sipping a hot cup of joe, he’d snickered a little to see the batty old hippie from down the street standing in an impromptu campground as people began to filter in, carrying food and instruments and all the makings for a community party. 

The newscaster had talked a little bit about last year’s protest before showing a clip from one of the nights on the line. Vern had never seen it before.

He slapped his hand over his eyes and groaned as he caught sight of old footage of himself crashed out in a lawnchair with a blanket thrown over him. He distinctly remembered waking up the next morning in that position, but he hadn’t realized that it had been caught on tape! Some big, tough protester he looked!

He kept watching more out of morbid curiosity than anything, and it was somewhat surprising to see that Mr. Grasshopper was the focus of the footage. The anchor said something or other about an ‘eminent musician,’ but Vern was trying more to hear the actual music than what the reporter was blathering about.

The footage was kind of shitty, since it had been taken in the dark, but the old man was pretty much clear, and Vern could hear a little of the audio under the anchor’s voice. There was something really good, really touching about it--Vern didn’t think much about music in general, but there was something in the idea of a guy standing out in the dark, playing music against the night in the middle of a protest that he had to admit he really liked. The camera caught the way Grasshopper moved and shifted with his music, and something in the way he played with his eyes closed and the way he swayed seemed sad and even kind of sweet all at once.

The footage wasn’t long, of course, and when it was over, Vern got up and took a shower. But he didn’t stop thinking about it.

He’d been right there beside him and he hadn’t woken up. Vern wondered a little about that--had Grasshopper been the one to lay him out and cover him up?

If so...well, it suddenly made things a hell of a lot more complicated. He’d gotten used to the idea that the old man didn’t like him, but if he’d been the one to get Vern in a sit and keep an eye on him, he might have been looking at the guy wrong for a whole year.

By the time mid-day rolled around, Vern wasn’t all that sure he wanted to be in Milton Heights. He kept out of the way when he spotted the old folks and took to leaning against the side of the makeshift stage and sipping a pretty bad cup of beer.

Yeah, he knew it was a big deal, and yeah, he knew he’d been one of the big movers and shakers behind the whole thing a year ago. But he couldn’t help but feel a little weird, when he considered what had happened in the last few days.

Maybe taking his shirt off had been a little much. It hadn’t been hot enough to excuse it, and he knew he’d only done it to tease. He honestly hadn’t put much thought into it, though why he wanted to tease his boss while he was half-naked was probably something that could bear a little scrutiny. He hadn’t meant anything by it, anyway, but he also thought that Grasshopper had been way too pissed over him going topless. Something else had to have been going on there.

He’d seen ol’ Grasshopper plenty pissed in his time, and he knew what to expect from it. For all his posh clothes and fancy-ass accent, he was a pretty normal man when you got down to it. Piss him off and he’d try and tear you a new one just like any ordinary guy. Vern kind of liked the way he lost his temper, actually, because he felt like he could see a real human underneath that “inexpressive dour ice statue” thing he seemed to do so often around Vern.

It had been weird to see him fighting with Mrs. Ladybug. With Vern, he got fiery and explosive. With her, he kept it all the anger tamped down, and when he’d spoken it had sounded like the air coming out of his mouth was frozen. She’d looked as surprised as anybody when Mr. Grasshopper had dragged her off and closed her door behind them.

Vern didn’t think Grasshopper was the kind to hurt a lady, but he’d stayed out there just in case to keep an eye on things. If the old girl had made any noise, he would’ve been over there like a shot.

When Grasshopper had came out of the house and walked up to him, Vern had almost wanted to bolt. He’d looked scary-angry, a kind of cold and distant look that made Vern wonder exactly how in control of himself he’d been--totally different from the hot and passionate man who’d nevertheless taken a calculated swing at him.

But what rooted him to the spot was the way Mr. Grasshopper looked at him. He’d expected something angry or even hateful in his expression, but when the man looked Vern in the face, all Vern had seen was sadness. Hopelessness. It was the look of a man who was totally crushed, one who was too miserable even for his eyes to be wet. 

“I apologize for any inconvenience or unpleasantness we may have caused you,” he’d said in a voice that sounded like nothing much in particular. The words, even the sounds that made the words, were so empty of any kind of meaning or intelligence, for a second, Vern had to stop and wonder if he hadn’t just spoken gibberish.

Before he could say anything--maybe to ask about Mrs. Ladybug, or ask him what was wrong, or even just to stop him from God-knew-what--he’d already gone. And the first thing he’d done when he was inside was block off the house from the sun, heavy curtains in place. Broken, sad music had stumbled and bumped around inside the closed walls, sounding like it was trying to find its way now that its bright and open avenue through the windows had been closed off.

James had dropped off an envelope with Vern’s wage on his way out to Ladybug’s and Vern had gone with him to check on the old girl.

She’d been crying, obviously, though she tried to smile when she saw them, and James was the first to ask her what was wrong. 

“Nothing, darling, just a mistake of mine,” she’d said, ushering the boy into the kitchen. Vern had hovered in the foyer, waiting for her. 

When she’d come back, he’d said in a low tone, “You all right?”

Mrs. Ladybug had smiled tremblingly. “Oh, this must look so appalling to you,” she’d said, fidgeting a little with her fingers. “You must think Mr. Grasshopper is some kind of vicious cad, but it was my mistake. I was being unkind to him in a horrible way...Mr. Centipede, please forgive me. And please do not think Mr. Grasshopper hurt me at all--I was the one to hurt him.”

That had left Vern more lost at sea than ever, but since the man of the house was definitely not willing to see company, he left it alone and went home confused.

Now, two days later, they were wandering around again arm-in-arm, Mr. Grasshopper all little quirked smiles and Mrs. Ladybug all bright eyes. Whatever it was had happened like a bolt of lightning, but it was over now and everything was just bliss, again.

Vern thought it was weird. As. Fuck.

The problem was that he didn’t have any context. He knew that more had to be going on between them and bearing on him than he knew, but damned if he had the faintest idea what it was. He’d be in the dark forever.

Vern slugged down the rest of his drink and decided that he had to find something to do with himself. He couldn’t just stand around all day feeling weird. He had to shake this off and go try to have some fun--maybe even get laid.

He was about to wander off when he saw Mr. Grasshopper coming towards him. He stood up straighter, wondering if his day was about to get bumpy. “Hey there.”

Mr. Grasshopper looked up suddenly, as if he hadn’t expected to see Vern there. “Ah, hello,” the old man said calmly. “I hope you are enjoying the festivities.”

“Yeah,” Vern said, the awkward weight of the conversation settling on his shoulders. “‘S’a...lot of people.”

“Indeed,” Mr. Grasshopper said, looking at the crowd. They stood in silence for a long moment or two, until they accidentally darted a glance at each other at the same time. Both jumped slightly.

Vern shuffled his feet. “Listen, man, I dunno what--”

“Would you please excuse me,” Mr. Grasshopper asked, speaking almost in unison. “I do not wish to interrupt, but I’ve been asked to perform.”

Vern finally caught sight of the violin case in the old man’s hand and bobbled his head. “Yeah! Sure, absolutely. Uh. Break a leg.”

Mr. Grasshopper’s mustache twitched slightly and Vern realized that there must’ve been a smile passing through on the old man’s face. “Thank you,” he said, and mounted the steps of the stage.

Vern went back to leaning against the stage and drinking, even as he heard the old man quietly checking his sound. After this morning and the crappy audio on that video, he decided that he’d kind of like to hear the old man play, after all. His kind of music wasn’t really Vern’s thing, but he could at least see a little bit where all these orchestra geeks were coming from when they worshipped a bunch of dead guys.

Mr. Grasshopper stepped out into the middle of the stage, long legs tightly together, back straight, chin up like the proud son of a bitch he was. The crowd wasn’t exactly expectant, of course, busy as it was with its own bustling and activity, but Vern could at least spot Tenebre and James, and Mrs. Ladybug, and those two cute young coeds from down the street standing off to the side and watching.

The old man tucked the violin under his chin, wedged against his cravat, and Vern had just enough time to think that the old man was going to fry today in all those clothes before music suddenly burst out of him. It was this raw, hungry tune that Vern scarcely recognized, something definitely Russian, deep and sad and joyful all at once. It sounded good, which would’ve been enough for his interest, but there was something that happened to Grasshopper when he played that really caught Vern’s eye.

His hands slid effortlessly up and down the neck of the violin, fingers pressing here and there, splaying and tightening as his bow jutted back and forth, dragging the sound out of the violin. He moved with it, swaying slightly, actually having to shift and step out of his initial position to stay with it. Something that Vern couldn’t quite see was happening inside Grasshopper while this went on, a brighter, happier cousin of whatever it was he’d heard trying to fly in the darkened living room a few days ago.

It occurred to him that he’d heard Grasshopper play about a thousand times before but had neither seen nor really listened to it. No wonder the guy played with an orchestra--not only was he good, but there was something about how he got physically into it that forced Vern to take a second look at the noise he was making.

Mr. Grasshopper went through a few more songs, gaining and losing members of his audience as the party bustled around him. When he finished, he ended the piece with this delicate little warble of a noise that Vern felt ricochet up his spine like a bolt of electricity. Something in the sound was breathless, sweet, and sharp--a combination Vern had always found appealing.

The musician pried himself away from his violin and stood up straight again, bowing at the waist. Vern suddenly wondered if the guy even knew how into it he got, or if he was too lost to his music to know that he’d strayed from his initial prim and proper position.

He clapped along with the rest of the audience, impressed. The old man really knew what he was about and no mistake. Vern could appreciate that...a little passion could only be good for the guy.

Grasshopper left the stage with that same little half-obscured smile he'd had on earlier and passed Vern on the way down.

“Hey,” Vern said, jerking a thumb back at the stage. “That was a hell of a thing.”

Mr. Grasshopper lifted his left eyebrow, the smile growing. “Thank you,” he said. “I hope you mean that it was pleasant.”

“Yeah, man, ‘course I do,” Vern grumbled. “Uh, listen, I dunno if you wanna clear the air or anything--”

“I don’t think I know what you mean,” Mr. Grasshopper said, shoulders tensing visibly.

“Y’know, couple days ago. ‘Sorry for the inconvenience’ and that.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. Uh, everything okay there? You looked pissed, man.”

“I suppose it could be described that way, although I would not say as much myself,” Mr. Grasshopper said. “It was a...misunderstanding that you were most unfortunately dragged into. I wished to express my regret that you had been involved against your will.”

“What?”

“I cannot but assume that you were put under some sort of duress or misleading suggestion by Mrs. Ladybug that caused you to disrobe,” the older man said, deliberately avoiding Vern’s eyes. “And I wished to apologize because you cannot have desired to perform that action.”

“Hey,” Vern said, befuddled and a little annoyed by how weird Grasshopper was acting. “My shirt don’t come off unless I want it to, man. What the hell’s the matter?”

Mr. Grasshopper made a frustrated noise. “You may of course work your will and I admit that neither I nor, I should imagine, God Himself can erect any meaningful impediments to bar your way in that regard,” he said tightly, “but you must admit that there was little enough provocation to perform the action and I find it peculiarly upsetting. Of course I recognize that you cannot realize the significance of your actions anymore than I can lucidly and publicly explain to you the cause of my considerable distress, but I ask that we refrain from discussing it in the future and request only that you accept my apology as the voice of a contrite heart--”

“What?” Vern snapped. “Chrissakes, Grasshopper, I took my goddamn shirt of! It’s not a big fucking deal! It’s not like it got you horny, anyway!”

Mr. Grasshopper made an expression that Vern had never seen before. It was there and gone in an instant and it left Vern feeling like the biggest dickhead in the history of the world, for a lot of reasons. `

“Certainly not,” Grasshopper said, voice a little unsteady. “Certainly not. Yet I am sure that you must not have been aware of the intrusive though well-meaning intentions of Mrs. Ladybug as it pertains to you--”

“Oh my God, do you think I’m fucking blind? Of course I knew, man, I just didn’t care!”

“Didn’t care?”

“Fuck it, I didn’t even mind.”

“...what?”

From a few feet away was the noise of a sudden popping sound and both men looked to the side to find James shaking a Polaroid snapshot. He looked at it critically for a moment, before looking up at them.

“Could you move in a little closer?” he asked. “I accidentally cut you down the middle, Uncle Theodore.”

“I am sure Mr. Centipede is rather busy at the moment,” Mr. Grasshopper said quickly, “and it is quite past time that we should be eating luncheon--”

Vern scooted in and nudged Grasshopper in the rib. “It’ll be quick, Gramps, relax,” he said, pulling out a cigar and sticking it in his mouth. “Fire away, kid.”

James took another picture and hastily developed it, wanting to see if it worked. Mr. Centipede looked good and tough, even with his big smile, but Uncle Theodore hadn’t smiled and it made him look uncomfortable.

“One more,” James insisted. “And smile this time, Uncle.”

“James,” Miss Spider called.

“Oh! I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

Mr. Grasshopper sighed. Vern snickered. “Bet the last time you had your picture taken, they were telling you not to move for twenty minutes,” he said out of the side of his mouth. He’d be lying like a rug to say he wasn’t glad of the distraction from their conversation.

“How dare you be so rude, you scoundrel,” Mr. Grasshopper said, turning to face him. “I merely fail to see the benefit of smiling vacantly at the slightest instruction.”

“Ya just need someone t’make you smile, man,” Vern said, lighting the cigar. “Hell, bet I could do it.”

“You think very highly of yourself,” Mr. Grasshopper replied. 

“Hey, I’m pretty great, but I ain’t no fancy-ass violinist--you know they were playing your shit on TV? Should be getting royalties for that, man.”

“What?” Mr. Grasshopper asked, brow furrowing. “I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about. I’ve never been recorded while performing.”

“Then call a lawyer, man, because they got some film of you rippin’ out some sonata or other on the picket line last year,” Vern replied. “There I am all crashed out in a chair and you’re up and spry and looking good playing something.”

Mr. Grasshopper went very pale. “Oh my God,” he said softly. “Can you identify what I was playing?”

Vern gave him the kind of look he deserved for a question that stupid. “I don’t know the name, no,” he said, “but I could probably ID it if you played it.”

“I didn’t play it up there?” Mr. Grasshopper asked, running through his own brief set list in his head. He’d played everything he’d played a year ago, except that accursed, wonderful, devastating Bach partita. 

“Nah.”

Mr. Grasshopper removed his monocle and rubbed his eyes with one hand. How humiliating! His heart and soul poured out on local television for the world to see! He thought that he’d tasted enough of the bitter fruit of mortification for at least one week--but of course not. 

And of course, the blessing that was a curse: the perfection of Bach contained the confession of a hidden _tendre_ that he had been so ineffectually trying to squash, and he who had inspired it had no notion of its presence whatsoever. Mr. Centipede was completely unaware of the personal meaning of the piece--possibly unaware of the piece’s existence, even--and that cut through him like a knife. All his distress for nothing.

“Hey, man, relax,” Mr. Centipede said. “It’s good shit. Just get someone to sue those network fuckers and kick me back a little of the dough for tipping you off.”

Mr. Grasshopper felt himself smile bitterly. “The money is the least of my worries. If there is any settlement you can have the entirety of it.”

Vern looked at him close. The guy looked like he wanted to melt into the ground, and not just from the heat. Vern thought he cared way too much about this, about everything; after all, he wasn’t the one who’d looked like a lazy bum knocked out on a lawn chair. He’d looked good in the video, real good, especially when you knew what he looked like when played up close. The video didn’t catch the little motions of his shoulders and hips or the expressions on his face. Give Mrs. Ladybug her credit--she was not joking about the old guy making some pretty suggestive faces when he played. Hot, even, if you liked the type, which Vern had to admit he kind of did.

“Hey, uh,” Vern asked, thinking again about that first night. “You happen to know how I ended up in that chair a year ago?”

Oh, good, Mr. Grasshopper thought. Perhaps if he got out all his embarrassment in this single 72 hour period, he could live the last few years of his life without any further shame. He might as well pull his heart out of his chest and toss it at the man, the way his day was going. 

“I am afraid that was me,” he said. “I am sure you would have preferred to remain upright and pacing, but I was growing concerned for your ability to perform that office and moreover for your physical well-being.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d expected, but for some reason it hadn’t been one of those rakish grins the other man was so alarmingly good at.

“Well,” Mr. Centipede said, “I look like a lazy bum on film but...thanks for keeping an eye on me, Grasshopper.” He waggled his eyebrows a little, the grin growing more suggestive. “Didn’t know you cared,” he added, nudging him.

Mr. Grasshopper rolled his eyes, smiling despite himself as the world suddenly became much more navigable and normal under the influence of that wicked smile. “Well, you cannot expect me to just leave you to die of exhaustion,” he said, lifting his left eyebrow at the man in return. “I had already paid you for services you had not rendered and I am sure that the local gossips would’ve seen something rude in my looting your corpse to retrieve my money.”

Vern barked out a laugh. “Hell, I’ll render yer services real good. You ain’t seen nothing yet.” Saying something like that had always flustered the old man, and Vern figured that was exactly what was needed to get them back on track.

Knowing this, Mr. Grasshopper decided that it was time to try something a little different. After all, Mr. Centipede apparently had few enough objections. He mentally stiffened his upper lip and returned fire.

“Hmm, promises, promises,” Mr. Grasshopper replied, the words coming out very like a purr, his smile entirely clear on his face. 

They didn’t hear the low popping sound and the determined fwip-fwip-fwip of a Polaroid print being snapped back and forth, Vern much too surprised by what Grasshopper had just said.

“What, you sayin’ I can’t?” Vern asked jutting his chin out, eyes full of playful challenge.

“Can’t what? Render your services?” Mr. Grasshopper asked, all cool innocence. “I’m sure your services have pleased others in the past, sir, but I daresay that your most diligent attentions would not meet the exact standards necessary to please me.”

Shit, Vern realized, since when was the old man such a flirty sombitch? He didn’t know what the hell the old man was thinking, talking like that, but Vern decided that he wanted to follow it and see what happened. “Fuck that, Gramps, you don’t even know what I can do to please ya!”

“I daresay I don’t, Mr. Centipede,” Mr. Grasshopper replied, with a smile slung low and almost dirty. “I look forward to the prospect of you demonstrating your abilities.”

Holy fuck! Was this why Ladybug had been so determined to get them set up? Because the old man was a dirty old fox when he wanted to be? Vern grinned and opened his mouth to reply.

“I think that turned out well,” James said suddenly, jolting the adults from their scandalous conversation. The little boy held up a photograph of the two men leaning towards each other, Mr. Centipede’s cocky posture and Mr. Grasshopper’s full and unhidden smile plainly present. Mr. Grasshopper examined it quickly and found himself stifling a smile that was far too fond.

“You have a future in this business, James,” the old gentleman said, handing the photograph to Vern. “Your talents are to be admired and fostered.” 

The little boy pulled himself up straight and tall, grinning. “I just need to be in the right place at the right time,” he said brightly. 

“Not bad, kid,” Vern said, giving it back to the boy. “So, uh. Yeah.”

Mr. Grasshopper looked at him with a slight smile. “Sunday, I should think, if not sooner, Mr. Centipede?”

“Yes, all right,” Vern replied. “See if I can get up to your ‘exacting standards.’” 

Something about the presence of James must’ve put down some of Grasshopper’s fire, for he ushered the boy away with nothing more than a warm, warning glance in Vern’s direction. Vern grinned broadly as he watched the old man walk away.

He was definitely taking his shirt off on Sunday.

\--

Marian held Lady close, smiling at the sweet simplicity of her curved waist against Marian’s palm. Getting her up this morning had taken some doing, but Lady was a bit of a, well, fine lady that way, and eventually it had worked out. 

It occurred to her that she hadn’t thought about Robin in weeks, but that somehow didn’t seem all that important when she spun Lady around and swung her to the beat of the music. After Mr. Grasshopper’s virtuoso performance, a lively band of hep-cats had taken up residence on the stage and was swinging, hard. 

Marian and Lady had practiced a routine for just this occasion and both were delighted with how the small amount of planning paid off. Lady let herself go just limp enough to give Marian the reins and the redhead rewarded her with some dizzying tango variations that dipped her deeply to the ground. 

They had a small audience watching them, but when Marian and Lady weren’t looking at each other, they were eyeballing their rivals. 

Georges Hautecoeur was a very good, if unconventional, dancer, and Madame Adelaide Bonfamille was simply superb at everything. Their dancing took more the form of tangos, rumbas, and merenges than Marian and Lady’s tightly-paced swing, but both couples kept an eye on the other, favoring them with bright, competitive smiles. 

James kept his camera on the action, snapping shot after shot of the dancers as they spun and dipped and flipped and sashayed to the beat. What Mr. Hautecoeur and Madame Bonfamille lacked in youth they made up for in experience, and with the bright vitality pouring off of both pairs, it was quite hard to say whose was the superior performance. 

When the band finished its song with an enormous crash, the crowd exploded into applause, as much for the music as for the dancers. Lady and Marian happily shook hands with the older couple before collapsing in each others’ arms, giggling breathlessly.

“Oh,” Mrs. Ladybug cooed. “But don’t they make such a very fetching couple?” she asked.

Mr. Grasshopper nudged her in the side and cleared his throat. 

“Don’t be silly, I’ve learned my lesson,” she said, waving a hand at him. “But they are so sweet together...”

“Why don’t we acquire a bit of tea, Buggy,” Mr. Grasshopper suggested, leading her away. If there was an extra spring in his step, she did not notice it.


	9. Chapter 9

“She’s out of my league!” Earthworm wailed. “She’s so bright and sparkling and active and political and brilliant and I’m just a little wretch!”

Mr. Centipede watched him sob and gnash his teeth with an expression of supreme boredom, cigar hanging limply from his mouth. He looked around, wondering how he’d get rid of this wet noodle and get back to having some fun. “Yeah?”

“Have you seen her form?” Earthworm asked suddenly. “She does a downward dog so graceful it would make you cry.”

“Kinky,” Vern mumbled.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“I thought you said--oh! But her Natarajasana...oh, she’s like a Valkyrie, some ancient warrior goddess! She’s divinity, for goodness’ sake, she even makes her own tempeh!”

“Yeah?”

“Yes! So fiery and earnest and she’d never look twice at me...”

“Yeah,” Vern said. “Well,” he continued, knocking the ash off of his cigar, “that’s a pisser. All right, catch ya later!”

“No!” Earthworm cried, seizing his arm. “You must tell me what to do!” 

“What?” Vern asked. “Why me?”

“Because you know women!” Earthworm said. “They love you!”

Vern rolled his eyes and puffed on his cigar a little. He didn’t exactly have his eye on any dames at the moment--quite the opposite, he thought with a smirk--but he’d learned a thing or two in the past twelve hours that might do Earthworm a little good. God knew, if ever there was a guy who needed to get laid...

“All right,” he said, slinging an arm around the guy. “Gotta make the first move, man. She’s a smart dame, right, little kooky, but hell, you’re into that--got her own interests, creative type, and workin’ the older hottie thing, right? Maybe she’s a little too brainy for you?”

“Well,” Earthworm said, adjusting his glasses, “I never said that--”

“Same thing,” Vern replied. “Now, ya go up. You’re smooth. You’re cool. You tell her something she wants to hear--something about her. ‘Hey, sugar,’ ya say, ‘hey, baby, you’re the hottest thing since...’ I dunno, preseasoned tofu? Whatever. ‘Hey, sweetheart, I love the way you wear that hemp skirt. You wanna go--’ What do you do on the weekends, anyway?”

“I like to go to drumming circles,” Earthworm replied.

“Perfect,” Vern said firmly. “‘How about we blow this joint and I realign your chi, gorgeous,’ you say, and she’ll be swooning in your arms.”

“That’s rubbish!”

“Nah, man, you just gotta go talk to her.”

“I can’t do it!” 

Vern growled under his breath. “Like hell,” he replied, grabbing Earthworm by the arm and dragging him into the cluster of tables.

\--

The sun went down over Milton Heights in slow, luxurious stages, the clouds only fully losing the last of their pink around 8:30 as blue began to overwhelm the city.

The party went on.

Mr. Grasshopper was busy looking both faintly uncomfortable--sitting at a picnic table that lacked a tablecloth was a little distressing--and unaccountably pleased by some unknown coup that must’ve occurred during the day. Mrs. Ladybug was pulling the cork out of a bottle of her homemade wine and Jock and Trusty were working with Tigger, Georges Hautecoeur, and Miss Spider to pull together a poker game. James was still running about, taking pictures of the assembled neighborhood and occasionally stopping to talk with his fellow residents and enjoy a few dances with the various ladies in town.

Ms. Kluck was hopelessly disappointed with the day. It was fun, certainly, but there were much more important things than fun to be considered when one was trying to commemorate a glorious people’s rebellion. She’d seen only one single solitary police officer all day, but Mr. Trusty had sabotaged her by talking to him before she’d got a chance to. Between that act of gross betrayal and Marian’s interfering tendency to dissuade others from building bonfires, she was growing more and more certain that she’d not be wrongfully yet nobly carted off to prison this whole party long.

Some people had no interest in a little just civic disobedience, she thought, thoroughly disgusted. She took another bite of her meal, sighing.

Quite suddenly, she felt a body bump into her and swallowed her bite of tabouli salad quickly, looking up.

“P-P-P-Pardon me,” the young man said, adjusting his dark eyeglasses with a nervous gesture. “Urm, I didn’t--I’m sorry, I--I mean to say, I--uh--I--I d-d-don’t suppose could help me?”

Ms. Kluck instantly recognized him and put on a bright smile. “Yes, dear boy?” she asked, batting her eyelashes slightly. Now here was a rather delicious little treat...the community center yoga instructor was such a twitchy, twiggy man, but to be quite honest, Ms. Kluck rather liked them slim. He was sleek and small, always wearing a pair of black sunglasses that totally obscured his eyes. He had a rather sweet English accent and wore a scarf even in this hot weather.

Ms. Kluck reflected with a rather salacious glee that he must be awfully flexible.

“Is this, um, do you know if this is organic?” he asked, gesturing towards the tabouli she’d brought to the potluck. “Only, you know, everything else is meat, or it supports big farming, or it’s horrible unsafe because it’s been genetically modified--”

“Oh, say no more, I understand entirely,” Ms. Kluck replied, shaking her head. “I don’t like to talk badly about our neighbors, naturally,” she said, leaning closer to him and whispering. “But you know, they don’t really treat their bodies rightly, do they? One must be very careful about what one puts into the temple of our flesh.”

The yoga instructor perked up noticeably and looked around before sliding onto the bench beside her. “I agree so much,” he said, leaning close and murmuring to her. “You just can’t trust these kinds of things. And woe betide anyone who doesn’t omit dairy...that’s just as bad as meat, really.”

“How lovely, to find a kindred spirit,” Ms. Kluck sighed. “I cut out dairy long ago, you know, for homogenization is just vile and it’s not much more kind to the animals, besides the horror it wreaks upon the body. No, I certainly never use such things myself. But this salad is quite all right, I assure you. I grew all the vegetables in my own garden.”

“Oh, how wonderful,” said the yoga instructor, in a voice that was hushed with love. He dipped his body in a quick namaste. “I’m Earthworm.”

“Ms. Kluck,” she replied, tucking her hair behind her ear. “Henrietta Kluck.”

“Such a pleasure,” Earthworm sighed. 

Ms. Kluck smiled and served him a little tabouli salad. “Have a lentil cake, too, dear,” she said sweetly, placing the patty on his plate. She knew the way to a man’s heart. “You look like you’re wasting away, you poor sweet man.”

“Thank you,” Earthworm smiled, taking the plate. “I don’t suppose you like drumming circles, do you?”

Ms. Kluck grinned. The day had just got rapidly better.

\--

Lady and Marian were dancing slowly together, the dark-haired girl resting her head on the redhead’s shoulder and smiling beautifully. Marian held her close, much too happy with the feeling of Lady’s soft breath against her collarbone and the light caress of the other woman’s sundress against her bare legs.

“Can I be quite honest with you?” Lady asked quietly. 

“Of course,” Marian replied. 

“I’m so, so glad we haven’t met up with your young man,” Lady whispered, lacing their fingers together. Marian slid her hand down Lady’s back just a little, feeling the curve of her lower back through her dress. “I know you’re still hoping to see him, of course,” she said. “But I...I just...”

She bounced her shoulders in a bid for nonchalance that didn’t quite work. 

Marian ran her hand heavily up Lady’s back again, spearing her fingers in her friend’s curly dark hair and holding her head close to her chest. “I’m glad we haven’t met him, too,” she replied, her lips brushing against Lady’s forehead. “Three years is a long time to be apart...and he hasn’t sought me out any more than I sought him.”

Lady leaned away, her head cupped in Marian’s hand. In the evening, she looked very beautiful, dark hair and lamplights gleaming in her brown eyes. Marian smiled as Lady leaned close and kissed her, very sweetly and softly on her lips. 

“I like this,” Lady said, wiggling her head and gesturing to all of it, to the neighborhood and them and they way they had grown to be together in the past few weeks. “It’s very fast, and I don’t know what to call it, but I like it.”

“I do, too,” Marian confirmed, kissing Lady again. She kissed her once, twice, and when the other girl bent her head with a shy smile, Marian cupped her jaw and kissed her a third time. 

Lady smiled beautifully and rested her head on Marian’s collarbone, wrapping both arms around her shoulders and holding her tightly. Marian wrapped her arms around Lady’s waist and they swayed together while the band played on.

\--

At their picnic table, Mrs. Ladybug sighed happily into her glass of wine while Mr. Grasshopper hummed thoughtfully.

“See?” she asked.

“I do see.”

“I told you.”

“You are quite right, my dear, I hope they are very happy together.”

“Absolutely adorable girls. Klucky will be delighted.”

“I daresay I agree.”

“And wherefore comes that expression of wild, secret delight, Mr. Grasshopper?” Mrs. Ladybug asked. “If it is not an imposition.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Mr. Grasshopper said, tracing his fingertips around his wineglass and looking idly in the direction of the poker game. Mr. Centipede was subbing in for Hautecoeur, who had fallen asleep. The musician smiled slightly. “I believe myself to have reached a plateau of common ground with one whom I thought I should never have the pleasure of agreeing.”

“My, my.”

“Quite.”

“He’s a handy man, Mr. Grasshopper. Just tell him you need something nailed.”

“Good heavens, Buggy,” Mr. Grasshopper said, smiling sheepishly and clinking his glass against hers. “You’re incorrigible.”

Mrs. Ladybug chose to see that as a compliment.

\--

The evening was wrapping up. James and Miss Spider had long since retired to her apartment and Ms. Kluck was still out sitting and chatting with the scrawny yoga instructor, apparently having a marvelous time. Adelaide Bonfamille had collected her solicitor and the two were sashaying down the street towards the Bonfamille mansion, the old man bellowing a bawdy dance hall tune that was lightly ornamented by Madame Bonfamille’s sweet peals of laughter. Jock and Trusty were having a smoke and making quiet noises about turning in for the night.

The two young women were noticeably absent.

All the rest of the neighborhood was full of the tents of Ms. Kluck’s friends, and Mr. Grasshopper deftly navigated Mrs. Ladybug and himself through the thick of things. Pleasantly tipsy, Mrs. Ladybug waved off his offers of assistance and kissed his cheek before wending her way home. 

Left to his own devices, Mr. Grasshopper collected his violin and his folding chair and stayed to listen to the band’s final song. Onstage, a woman with long pale hair and a voice like a mink stole was singing about her irresponsible young man and how she loved him despite his behavior.

Mr. Centipede appeared at his elbow after a moment or two.

“Do you know,” Mr. Grasshopper said quietly, “I don’t think I’m quite ready to turn in yet.”

“No?”

“No indeed. I rather feel like staying up a bit. Perhaps playing something.”

“Yeah? Well,” Vern said, rocking back and forth on his feet. “If you wanna play a little something, maybe I can ID that song of yours.”

“Oh, that would be very helpful. I should like to speak to a lawyer with confidence about the musical performance in question. It doesn’t do to go into these things half-cocked.”

Vern grinned broadly. “‘Course not. I bet we can get you full-cocked in no time.”

“I’m sure you can,” Mr. Grasshopper murmured in an undertone, lifting one eyebrow slightly and smirking. “It would not be an imposition, Mr. Centipede, if I were to borrow you for a moment and ask you to subject yourself to my fiddling?”

“It’d be my pleasure, Mr. Grasshopper,” Vern replied, taking the lawn chair and leaving Mr. Grasshopper to carry his violin. 

\--

In the morning, Mr. Grasshopper started the coffee maker, hoping that the smell of coffee with evoke a response of life from upstairs. He almost felt sorry for Mr. Centipede, honestly; the previous evening had been...busy. He was fairly certain that he was a medical marvel: 69 years old and perfectly capable of going three rounds. He was pleasantly sore in more than a few places and almost felt impossibly chipper--he felt as it at any moment Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony would simply explode out of him.

Whistling, he stepped out onto his porch to pick up his newspaper.

Glancing across the street, he jumped as he caught sight of Mrs. Ladybug and Ms. Kluck drinking their morning tea on the porch. He grinned sheepishly and gave them a quick wave.

Each woman gave him a thumbs-up. “Cocktails at six, Mr. G,” Ms. Kluck said loudly, grinning and looking rather happily exhausted herself. “We have so much to talk about!”

Mr. Grasshopper nodded and stepped back into his house. After a moment or two of thought, he locked his front door, stepped out of his shoes, and mounted the stairs while stripping out of his jacket and tie. Going back to bed sounded like a bloody good option, if he had to wait until six this evening. 

After all, four had always been his lucky number.


End file.
